After a relatively short drive from Sealy, Texas, we rolled in to San Antonio. Here we are at our first commercial campsite, a KOA. It turns out to be a fairly nice place (not as crammed as a lot of the commercial sites we have driven by appear to be). We got into our site, fairly close to a little river and a golf course. We found out later that this 'little river' swelled quite a bit when San Antonio got 15 inches of rain in 24 hours back in October. In fact, it swelled to probably around 400 feet wide (from its present 20 feet). The entire campsite was under water and it destroyed a good percentage of the sites. We learned this from people who had been to this site before and after. They are still recovering, with a lot of rebuilding and clean up still occuring.
Our first visit, just after setting up the trailer, was to head up to the Natural Bridge Caverns, just north of San Antonio. This is a commercial caverns which is heavily advertised as the largest caverns in Texas. It was definitely a lot bigger than our caverns in Florida. Daniel and James found the little 'demo' gold miner sifting location quite interesting (Daniel kept asking money to try it out .. he never got a chance):
After a line-up and bit of a wait it was our turn to head into the depths of the caverns:
This cavern was considerably deeper than the Florida caverns. I believe we were around 30 feet below ground level in Florida, at the Natural Bridge Caverns you get 180 feet below and there are some spots that are even deeper than that along the walking route. Well, it must be time for a group shot deep underground. This picture almost looks like a night shot in the desert beside some rocky outcroppings:
The most important part of the trip is the 'tasty treat' afterwards:
That evening we do a little relaxing a la Sigler Six style .. let's see, Pam at the sink washing and everyone else entertaining themselves. Hey, that doesn't look fair!
On that first evening we discovered a hot water problem in the trailer. We had a mini-leak under the sink (should be relatively easy to fix with a screwdriver .. once I get one) around the hot water tap (very hard to get at, though), and we found out that the pressure relief valve was acting up ('releasing' too early). On the next day we tried it again, and unfortunately, we got the same result. On the third day we checked with the local Coleman dealer and they have a new valve that should fit and we will have to replace it on the way out of San Antonio on the Saturday morning (a minor annoyance).
Anyways, back to the second day, we visited the Witte Museum. This is a fairly neat science museum (we got in for free (!) because we have an Ontario Science Centre family pass). We checked out the inventions section and found a very interesting section of the museum on the seven regions of Texas. It showed the local wildlife in each area (some in their natural habitat .. although dead). It was quite a neat display (actually, there was one section where there were some live animals, snakes, spiders, tortoise). On the way back home after the museum we stopped at a Sonic drive-in restaurant. It's just like the A&W restaurants of the old days when you would drive in, order from inside your car at your own little private stall and they would come out and serve you and take your money at the car window.
On the third day, we visited the Alamo. It was real neat to see all the history and get the story of what happened. We followed this up with a visit to the local IMAX theatre to see the Alamo IMAX movie they were presenting. This was a well-done re-enactment of the events leading up to and the battle (complete with Patrick Swayze look-a-like brother acting). Here we are at the Alamo:
Certainly, we have to take time and get to our friendly neighbourhood Kinko's while in a big city like San Antonio. Heather Lynn and James love to take this trip:
Before we depart, I should show you what our KOA campsite looked like. It was very nice, considering we were only a few minutes from downtown San Antonio (and much nicer now than four months ago when it almost got washed away in the flood:
Well, time to pack up from San Antonio, and head off to Fort Stockton, on our way to the Carlsbad Caverns!