Saturday, October 26, 2013

Texas day of the dead


Dear Briggz,

            West Texas is a whole lot of nothing. The Shutdown continues so any thought of heading to Bing Bend National Park is out the door. The “Plan”, head east toward San Antonio. Grandma and Grandpa have a timeshare type of condo thing that we are going to take advantage of. It happens to be in “Hill Country" north of the city. The condo was a nice change apart from the phone calls from the folks there to urge us to buy into it a bit more.  You know how it goes, more money = Presidential suite.  No thanks. Plus the Sox are in the hunt for the ALCS pennant. That last sentence may give you a hint as to what we did for a couple of our days there. One day two though, we ventured into San Antonio. Mom and I wanted the boys to see the River Walk, which is pretty cool. There are a bunch of restaurants and shops that line the river walk set below the main streets of the city. The walkway follows the river a god ways from the hotel district to the convention center area. From there you can pop up to street level and go take a tour of the Alamo.  So that is what we did. The Alamo is a lot smaller than everyone pictures it in their head. It is an old mission and remains a religious building. Throughout the tour we saw artifacts from the Texas Revolution where the pivotal Battle of the Alamo took place in 1836. The Siege lasted only 13 days. The Texians were defending the Mission against the Mexican Troops who were retaliating against the Texians after being driven out of Mexican Texas several months prior.


The boys at the Alamo
            Because we can only stay at the condo for three nights at a time we packed up and headed a short jog north and settled in a place called Buchanan Dam. Buchanan Dam happens to be about an hour west of Austin Texas. We decided to set up shop and stay for five nights. Buchanan Lake has a few interesting features, the first one noted was the lack of water. Above the dam there has been a drought for several years now and the water level is approx.. 20-25 ft. lower than what it was normally. So you may ask, What there is to see? I mean, you camp near a lake you expect to see water… Well what you can do if you have 4 wheel drive, is head on out about ¾ to a 1 mile to the waters edge. There you can fish, or scour the lakebed for arrowheads. So that’s what we did. We actually found several arrowheads and could have spent even more time there but this stop was more to relax and to fill our days in an adventure.
            We did however take time to drive into Austin for a Dia de los Muertos festival. There were all sorts of crafts and music and face paintings celebrating the Day of the Dead. We also visited the Capital Building and got a nice glimpse of Texan history and the birth of the “Cowboy”.





Day of the dead cowboy!

That’s all for now. We will write soon.

Be a good boy!
           

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