Day 17 - Remember the Tates

We continued the Tate Family Adventure back to San Antonio the next morning. We stopped at another famous "Freddy's" for a fast pit stop before heading to downtown historic San Antonio to spend the afternoon hours. San Antonio is famous for a few historic sites, one being the Alamo and the other is known as the River Walk. So we parked and strolled around downtown starting with the Alamo itself.

Now, the Alamo started out as a Spanish mission. These can be found all over the Southern United States from Texas to Florida along the coastal areas. The missions are remnants of the Spanish occupation of the southern states as long ago they used these camps as churches to preach the gospel to the Native Americans that inhabited them first. The Alamo was no exception to this, and the famous image of the Alamo featured in almost every picture seen today is actually of the church itself and its sanctuary. I think most people assume that the Alamo was this "podunk" looking mini-fortress that got overridden because let's be honest it doesn't look like much of a fortified medieval castle or anything, but that's actually due to the fact that the image of the Alamo we have today is merely a fraction of what the garrison used to be like back in the day.

Staying at the Alamo a while was actually an unexpected treat. We spent some time touring around and looking at the artifacts that were excavated from the site after the battle, stood in the long barracks where the last bloody defenses took place, and even watched a video and personal talk with a ranger about the events during the battle at the Alamo too. I personally liked a few of the exhibits featuring David Crockett and the ones featuring general Bowie, a principle leader in the resistance at the Alamo and also made famous for his personal knife. The Bowie Knife. After we left the actual fort area itself, we also went over to check out a full-scale model of the original Alamo with a light show that depicted just how the battle at the Alamo went down. Not bad for an extra $3, not to mention that the show was narrated by Phil Collins. Yes, I can feel it calling in the air tonight, Phil Collins. Turns out he's an "Alamo enthusiast," who knew?

After spending our time at the Alamo, we made it down to the River Walk and took a boat tour throughout the entire area. The River Walk has restaurants, hotels, shops, and other great little places dispersed along small canals, and the boat tour allowed us to travel right along the entire River Walk and see it all. Something interesting about the River Walk is that certain exhibits along it were built for the 1968 World's Fair, for instance towering above the River Walk is the Tower of the Americas. It's a large free-standing tower that looks quite like the Space Needle and rotates around with a revolving restaurant as well. Funny though, it's only the 2nd largest free-standing tower like that in the world. The Space Needle is the third tallest and the biggest one of them all is actually in Las Vegas, the Stratosphere. That was thoroughly interesting to us, since we've actually been to all three on our trip without even planning it!

After our River Walk tour, we took some time to walk around on our own and take some more pictures. The heat was pretty intense though and we were all starving too, so we grabbed a nice tex-mex meal inside a local restaurant along the River Walk itself. We had some downtime, enjoyed some good food and eventually made it back to our vehicle so that we could get a move toward the train station. We boarded an overnight train to New Orleans and said goodbye to the great state of Texas and tried to get some sleep before headin' down to the deep South to explore.

Here's the update track list to follow along to.

Grand Canyon - "Sunrise, Sunset" ~Soundtrack from Fiddler on the Roof
Hoover Dam - "Big Yellow Taxi" ~Joni Mitchell
Austin - "Texas Flood" ~Stevie Ray Vaughn
San Antonio - "China Grove" ~Doobie Brothers
River Walk - "Proud Mary" ~Ike and Tina Turner (The Cover by CCR)
Alamo - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2921198884474947824#