We had a fine visit with Jul and family. We had an adventure with the kids, taking them to the Charlotte science center. They had a lot of fun. Vacation is over. It’s time to head for home.

We had a fine time catching up with Dick and Darlene. We’re off to North Carolina.

When we laid out our trip, my top request was to get to Jul’s on Saturday so we could have time with the grandkids. Number two was to get a full day in Vicksburg. We just had our full day. It was fine, butt still a bit of a disapointment. We hired a tour guide for the battlefield. In my mind, the tour would go something like this:

“On such-and-such a day, Grant sent a zillion troups up this hill. They got so close that they had hand-to-hand fighting before the confederits pushed them back. Half a zillion federals lost their lives that day.”

What we got was a commentary about which state put up this or that monument plus the names of several generals. The guide realized this, but he just didn’t know what I was most interested in. It didn’t help that we also “learned” that the whites treated their slaves well, the slave issue could have been settled by a vote in congress, yada yada. We thanked him for the tour and he gave us a substantial discount. At least I got to see where many of the battles were fought. Our expectations for the other museums were pretty low, which matched reality.

We decided we wanted to have a little wine-and-snack party this evening. This turned out to be our one unqualified success. Our favorite snack is Snyder’s Honey Mustartd and Onion pretzel pieces. On our fourth store, we found exactly what we wanted. Woo-hoo.

Tomorrow we drive to Bessemer. Bessemer is important because it is half way between Viclsburg and Atlanta, where Danita’s cousin Darlene lives. The hotel is supposed to have an indoor pool. If the pool is open, we will achieve all our hopes and asperations for the day.

Vicksburg has some levy walls with painted scenes. Here’s a picture of the painting of the twin bridges over the Mississippi river. The foreground bridge is for the railroad. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had one more day in Fort Worth. We went to the kitschy touristy “Cattle Drive”. After a couple of hours, we exhausted everything we wanted to do. We decided to go to the Zoo, mostly because it is open on Mondays. The zoo has a nice hook. The zoo is long and narrow. After we walked almost the full length of the zoo, I was in the mood for some coffee. So I got coffee and Danita finished the zoo. When she re-joined me, I was still tuckerd out. It’s a long walk to the car, but just by fortuitous coincidence, they have a train that will give you a ride back to the entrance. They charged $4 per person. I would have paid more.

Tomorrow is our longest drive. We’re going to Vicksburg. It’s 400 miles — about 6 hours for most people. It will be most of the day for us. We’ll take a break at a Louisiana Museum about half way there. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Danita’s nephew Joe lives in Fort Worth. We were able to spend some time with his family both yesterday and again today. With a little luck, we’ll get a little more time with them tomorrow. Those girls are as cute as a button. We had a really good time.

Besides that, we have been museum-ing. The Kimbell Art Museum was my favorite. They have two buildings, each named after the architect that designed the building — Kahn and Piano. Both are well kown arciitects and both did spectacular jobs. Besides viewig art, we took the architecture tour.

Our tour leader mentioned one piece that he said was the most valuabe. According to the description, it comes from the Wari people in Peru circa 500 CE. It has inlays of mother-of-pearl, purple and orange spondylus shell, mussel shell, turquoise, pyritem greenstone, lapis lazuh, and silver. Is it more valuiable than their Picasso, Matisse, and works other famous European painters? I don’t know, but it’s certain the owner was an elite member of their society. If you are ever in Ft. Worth, the Kimbell is well worth your time. We also visited the modern art museum, which actually had one piece that I understood. You can find a few pics on the web site if you are interested.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We spent some time in Austin, staying in an Airstream trailer. I didn’t care for it. Temperatures were on the cool side. Heat was provided by a portable heater near the bed. It wasn’t possible to keep the bathroom warm. The trailer had a hand-held hose in the tub in lieu of a shower. But it was only for two nights, and we were toasty warm in the bed.

We visited museums and such. It’s interesting how different museums offer different insights. The mission museum explained that while things didn’t go as planned, they successfully met their main objective, which was to turn the indigenous peoples into Spanish speaking Catholics. The Alamo emphasized the causes of the revolution and how a desire to restore the constitution turned into a fight for indepedence from Mexico. The Witte emphasized that the indegenous peoples were every bit as human as we are today, along with a very interesting presentation of the ecology of Texas. The Bullock museum discussed segregation up through the 50s. All these museums are covering the same material, but if two people each attended one of these museums, they would walk away with much different thoughts about Texas.

We also visited the LBJ library. They did a masterful job of protraying Johnson’s administration. We even squeezed in a visit to the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame. They did an excellent job of presenting the highlights as well as the low lights of the Rangers.

Here’s a couple of cool things. Sam Houston lead the battle that made Texas independent of Mexico. He was the governor of Tennessee, the president of Texas, and the governor of Texas twice. He was removed from office as governor when he refused to sign the articles of confederation.

Anybody who visits Texas, no matter how casual their visit, can’t possibly escape the “Come and take it” flag. Mexico gave Texas a canon to help them defend themselves from Comanchee Indians. When Texas rebelled, Mexaco wanted the canon back. Texans declined, raising their now famous flag. We saw a reproduction of the canon. I couldn’t believe how small it was.

We’ve made it to the B & B in Fort Worth. It’s a comfortable and very spacious room. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are pics on the website.

Our first stop yesterday was the San Antonio Japanese Tea Garden. My view of gardens is that they are OK when done in moderation. This garden is different. Walking into the garden was like walking into Shangra La. It was stunning. They converted a stone quary to a garden, which sounds prosaic. But the way they did it was astonishing. We had to stop and just take it in before walking around. It helped that we arrived early. The garden opens at 7 AM. We had the place to ourselves, which enhanced the feelings of peace and tranquility. And this was the effect in the winter, when much of the vegitation was brown. The pictures of gardens I take never represent what I see in the garden. I’ll leave the pictures to thse who want to visit the website.

From there, we went to the Witte museum. I expected this to be a typical science museum, but it was much better than that. They focused on telling the stories of inhabitants in Texas, from the dinosaurs to the 1850s. In this case, “inhabitants” includes wildlife and plant life — in other words, ecology. I thought the dinosaur exhibit was typical of what one would see in any other museum. But the rest of the presentation was first class. We spent several hours learning about the five ecology zones in Texas as well as human inhabitants, both ancient and modern.

Before leaving San Antonio, I can’t help but ask the purpose of this sign. It doesn’t seem to give pedestrians the right-of-way to cross the street. It doesn’t signal motorists to stop or even yield. But it did turn on flashing lights and we did survive the crossings.

After that it was time to leave San Antonio and move on to the dude ranch. We survived our first horse ride, had a Texas cowboy dinner, followed by a campfire. Pictures are on the website.

We had three perfect experiences in one day. Does that make a vacation trifects?

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We spent a couple of days in San Anton, home of the Alamo. I visited the Alamo many years ago and was not impressed. Several people warned us not to get our hopes up. However, the Alamo turned out to be the best part of our visit. The key was the guided tour. We learned a lot about the history of San Antonio which, of course, include the battle of the Alamo. I won’t go into the many misconceptions most of us have about the Alamo, but I will say that many of the “facts” I knew about the Alamo were just wrong.

The Alamo was just one of five missions in the San Antonio area. All but the Alamo have active Catholic churches today. Our second most interesting activity was visiting the San Jose mission, which focused on the history of the indigenous people. We enjoyed going to mass at San Fernando Cathedral. founded in 1731, the stone cathedral is immaculate.

We also managed to do visit many other tourist attractions, including the world famous River Walk. My personal favorite totally irrelevant tourist object was Colonel Crockett’s Crooked Conestoga (our name for the period piece outside the Crocket hotel).

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We’ve spent the last few days with Rick and Suzy. Mainly, we’ve been eating extremely well. But we managed to do a few other things also. In Galveston, we visited the Moody Mansion. Moody was one of the wealthiest people in the US in the late 19th century. The family held onto their businesses, wealth, and house through the 1950s. The family lived a low-key life style for people in their economic bracket, but they had all the comforts … a state-of-the-art intercom system, a first-class Victrola, and even a radio. If you visit the website, you can see a few pictures. The house was built in the late 1800s. There was already an electric power plant on the island. The house was fitted with electricity from it’s initial construction.

A trip to Houston would never be complete without a visit to the San Jacinto battleground, Of course I knew the Texans lost the battle at the Alamo. I knew they also lost several other battles. And I knew that Santa Anna had the habit of taking no prisoners, it being easier to just kill all the survivors. What I didn’t know was that Texans won the war and their independence with the only battle they won. The key was that they not only decisively won the batte, but they also captured Santa Anna. It seems Santa Anna didn’t want the Texans to follow his example of killing all the survivors, and was willing to cede Texas their independance in exchange for his life.

There are many cool stories about the monument. Here is one. It was politically important that this monument not be taller than the Washington monument in DC. After several surveys and studies, they decided the proper “zero level” from which the monument’s height is measured should be 15 feet above ground level. Presto! The Washington monument is taller.

Another fascenating trip was a boat ride through the Houston port. The Houston port is the largest in the US by several measures. Seeing the ships, refineries, and other plants from the river was fascenating. On the website, you will see a picture of an orange boat on a freighter. This is the only lifeboat for the ship. Ships are so automated the entire crew can fit in this one lifeboat. The most common use for lifeboats is to escape from pirates. Once the captian soulds the “abandon ship” signal, the crew have 5 mintes to get themselves in the lifeboat. After that the door is sealed, the release triggered, and everybody on the lifeboat gets a very fast and intense trip away from the freighter and into the surrounding ocean.

You might have heard about the ice storm and power failures in Texas. These are in the Austin area. Our next stop is San Antonio. We won’t be in Austin until Feb 8. They should have everything patched up by then.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.