Remember The Alamo

It rained some overnight - and they needed the rain.  In this picture of the lake where the alligators are, all that brown area in the background is usually part of the lake, but it has dried up:

I went for another walk this morning, and saw lots of alligators, but they were all just eyes and nose peaking out of the water:

And no matter how long I waited, they didn't move.  However, there are also lots of other species along this walk - all sorts of different kinds of birds, like these:

And, just as I went to take a picture of this heron, he dipped into the water and got dinner:

We finally got away from the alligator park at about 11am and drove all the way to San Antonio.  After the rain in the night, and showers this morning, it cleared up in the afternoon to a completely sunny day again.  There didn't seem to be any good parks to camp in, so we just headed for Wal-Mart (N29 21 11.8, W98 28 40.0) fairly close to downtown for the night.  At this Wal-Mart, the security guard was more obvious than usual, driving up and down between all the cars all evening and all night.

23 November, Wednesday

After buying a couple of things in Wal-Mart in the morning (about $15 worth - a fairly cheap camping spot compared with the state parks!), we drove the 5 or 6 miles to downtown San Antonio.  We looked for a parking lot, but then decided just to park at a parking meter on the street, which was a real bargain at 25 cents per hour, and you could park up to 10 hours.  First stop was the Alamo, a fairly short walk:

Now, I'm not sure just why Americans are so excited about the Alamo, but they obviously were, judging from the people touring around this place.  I found it somewhat interesting, but not like most of the other people there.  And Doreen, of course, was of no help - she can't remember anything about her American history.  Anyway, now I'm going to have to read up about the Alamo, and figure out why this was such an earth shaking event.

After I dragged Doreen kicking and screaming away from the Alamo, we went down to the "River Walk."  Now this was really worth going to:

The river, and walk along both sides is down below street level, and goes underneath the streets which cross the river on bridges.  And there are tour boats that take people for rides on the river:

Along side are numerous shops and restaurants of all sorts, with tables out by the river, like this Mexican restaurant:

It is really a beautiful place, and it is apparently teaming with life in the evenings.  As you can see in this picture, the trees all have light strings wound around them:

We had put 4 quarters in the parking meter, and there was still more than an hour left on the meter when we returned to the motorhome.  I could have spent a couple of days in San Antonio, however, as there are many, many museums etc. that we could have gone to.

However, Doreen likes to travel!  And we headed out, doing battle with the San Antonio freeways, and ended up on I-10, traveling all the way to South Llano River State Park (N30 26 47.2, W99 47 53.8), a couple of hours away.  The vegetation has gradually changed along the way, from being green around Houston, like the east, to being desert here like the west, as you can see in this picture of our campsite: