San Antonio Fun - Dec 2005

During the time my folks were visiting us in San Antonio, we had planned to spend one evening enjoying the holiday lights along the Riverwalk. Since they were here during the week between Christmas and New Year's, we were trying to figure out which night would be the LEAST crowded with tourists. Since Christmas was on a Sunday and New Year's Eve was on a Saturday, we figured that somewhere right smack dab in the middle of the week would be our best chance. We picked Wednesday 12/28 for our downtown excursion and took off in the early afternoon to avoid rush hour traffic.

Our first stop was at Market Square (about a mile from the Riverwalk) where we wandered around the indoor/outdoor mall and enjoyed dozens of little shops that sold every kind of Mexican import item that you can imagine. All the stores had a colorful array of goods and the walkways were twinkling with lights and strung overhead with the colorful cut-paper doilies (aka papel picados.) We watched a youth group dressed in colorful costumes as they performed traditional Mexican dances and we chuckled at the very littlest ones as they tried to remember the steps while fighting off stage fright.

Even for an early Wednesday evening, the mall was packed and all the restaurants had lines outside. As we wandered through the masses, we were amused by several of the statues that were scattered about the mall including this lovely couple who my Mom befriended. We laughed as we joked that this couple had probably been waiting just a bit too long for their table.

After browsing for a couple of hours, we got back in the car and began the short drive over to the Riverwalk. We only made it about 1 block before getting snarled up in a horrible traffic jam. After inching along one street, we turned off onto a side street and tried to get to the Riverwalk via a back route. No luck — every road was solid traffic and every parking lot was full. It was then we began noticing that a lot of the folks were wearing Nebraska and Michigan sweatshirts — turns out we'd picked the day of the Alamo Bowl to play tourist and got caught up in a throng of thousands of spectators all out to see the Riverwalk before the big game. After creeping through downtown traffic for about an hour we gave up and went home without ever seeing the Riverwalk. We did come close and caught a glimpse of water as we crossed a bridge. Oh yes, we also got to see a sign pointing to the Alamo. Oh well, next time!

While in San Antonio, we stayed at Blazing Star RV Park and had two sites side-by-side. My Mom, who we kiddingly call the "Martha Stewart of RVing" had set up our shared grassy patio with lamps, rope lights, twinkly lights and an assortment of breeze catchers. As much as we tease her, we all enjoyed sitting outside in the evenings and the festive lights were a warm welcome whenever we came home after dark.

Other than missing the Riverwalk experience, we did have fun while in town. Several of Frank's friends from high school and college still live in San Antonio and we've recently re-connected with them and have enjoyed several fun gatherings. This evening Mike & Judy were celebrating their 30th anniversary and since Ron & Missy were on their 32nd year and Frank & I had recently celebrated our 30th, we all toasted to long, happy marriages. Here's to all those lucky couples who are married to their best friend!

On that same evening we had a major forehead-slapping "what a small world" experience. Frank's group of friends have stayed close over the years and they get together regularly. We knew all of them except for one couple who joined the group sometime after Frank had moved away. We'd heard a lot about them, but that evening was the first time we'd met them. I sat next to Pat & Patty and as we chatted we discovered that we had the same last name — Williams. Now, Williams is a common name, so we joked that maybe we were related and tried to make a connection along the line of our Williams' roots. No such luck — Pat's and Frank's ancestors came from different parts of the country and we couldn't find any Williams connection. Our discussion then wandered to our Texas roots and I mentioned that while Frank's dad wasn't a Texan, his mom was and that she grew up in the nearby itty bitty town of Knippa and that her family at one time had owned the D'Hanis Brick Factory. That just about knocked Patty off her seat. After a few rushed queries about names and places, it turned out that her grandma and Frank's grandma were sisters and I think that made them second cousins. Small world is right!