San Antonio and the Surrounding Area

San Antonio is a great place to visit. The town itself has a lot of history, not to mention a great river walk. For our first tourist day we went downtown to visit the Alamo and the river walk.

We entered the river walk through the Hyatt across from the Alamo.
Naturally, we found some geocaches as we strolled along the river walk.
Near on of the caches, we spotted a mother duck and her ducklings. We don't know why two of them were left on the rock below--maybe they couldn't make the jump to be with mother duck.
Another day we drove to the Medina River Preserve and found some more geocaches. The trail was paved most of the way with some switchbacks to get down closer to the river.
One of our other adventures was to drive to Fredericksburg, Texas--geocaching all the way. We have been through Fredericksburg several times, but not when the stores were open. This time we took our time and walked the downtown area. There is still more to do in Fredericksburg, but that was all we had time for this trip.

San Antonio originally was to have 6 missions. Only 5 of them were successful. The Alamo is one of the missions. It is run by a state historical society. The other 4 missions are part of a national park. We spent a day visiting the missions along the San Antonio River. We started with Mission San Jose which has the visitor center for all the missions.
Each mission originally was protected by a wall surrounding all the buildings. There was a large area inside the wall for people to work.
Lining the walls were rooms for the inhabitants of the area. When they needed protection, they lived inside the missions.

Most of the areas we visited have been reconstructed.
From San Jose we headed south to Mission San Juan. Near the entrance to this mission there was a field of hay people.

This mission was smaller than the first, but it still had the same elements--a chapel, granary, wall, large grounds, rooms for locals.
The southernmost mission was Mission Espada. It was the smallest area of the four we had visited.

Then we went north to Mission Concepcion. As we neared Concepcion, we passed a marker noting that Mission Nejaria was never built (the sixth mission). The chapel Concepcion has needed the least amount of restoration to its structure. Restoration is in progress in this chapel and surrounding building. As the paint and plaster has peeled over the years, it is revealing frescoes on the walls.

Our last day in San Antonio we returned downtown to the river walk and took the river cruise. It was so enjoyable and informative that we forgot to take pictures. We walked around the river walk one last time and took a few pictures of some of the things we learned from our tour guide.

The building along the river walk with the most Gothic features was the home to the first Montgomery Wards and later to Sears. President Eisenhower worked there before going to West Point. Here are some faces from the building.

We walked to the end of the river walk where the San Antonio River spills through the last flood gate and continues south to the missions and finally the Gulf of Mexico.

We enjoyed our stay in San Antonio. After a week it was time to leave. Our plan is to head north toward Oklahoma and then Arkansas to Bob's parents' house.