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.
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.
Come and Take It canon
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.
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?
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.
Our Alamo tour guide
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.
San Jose Mission Church
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).
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.
For you young’ins, the title is a take-off of Edwin Star’s 1970 song about war. Fortunately, Covid is no where nearly as bad as war, at least for us. When I got my cold, I took a Covid test. It came up negative. My symptoms were pretty strong when I tested, so I assumed I didn’t have Covid. When I took the follow-up test, it came up positive. The directions say to wait 15 minutes and look really close for the second line. My came up loud and clear in less than one minute. If the results were an audible bong, the noise would have knocked my socks off. Danita also tested positive. I’m over my symptoms. Danita’s symptoms are mild enough that she had a healthy apatite for breakfast. We are supposed to isolate through Wednesday.
We are well positioned for our isolation. We were able to extend our stay at the Baton Rouge Embassy Suites for our last two isolation days. We have a suite with a door between the bedroom and living room. We have three sinks. The hotel breakfast has good foods including a make-your-own omelet station. The room rate is reasonable. There are plenty of stores, restaurants, and services near by. (We selected Doc’s wash, dry, and fold.) The internet service is solid.
Can one cruise without getting Covid? My symptoms started in the evening of our disembarkation day. The last two days of the cruise were sea days. There’s not much doubt that we got the “dam” variant of Covid. (All Holland America ship names end with “dam”.) We took extreme precautions. We got our fall bivalent Covid booster along with our flu shots. We wore KN-95 masks whenever we were in public areas indoors. Sometimes we wore masks while outside due to the size of the crowd. We ate all of our meals at our own separate table (to the dismay of the seating staff). However, life is life. It’s all part of the adventure.
Isolation isn’t forever. We’ll be heading over to Rick’s and Suzy’s to continue our adventure Wednesday afternoon.
Yesterday we drove through 4 states — Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Our main goal was to get to Baton Rouge, but we made a couple of stops to break up the drive. The better stop was at the National Wildlife Refuge in Mississippi. This is the only place where Sandhill Cranes live. When the wildlife refuge was created m there were only 30 Sandhill cranes. Today there are more than 150. We learned a lot about Sandhill cranes and this savanna habitat.
When we got to our hotel, I was feeling better but Danita had caught my cold. By 7:30 last night we were both asleep. I’m almost back to normal but Danita has a fever. We planned to be in Baton Rouge two days. We might spend most of that time recuperating.
We drove to a museum in Tallahassee. They had indigenous wild animals, barn yard animals, and antebellum buildings. I didn’t take any pictures because I was shaking from being cold. From there we drove to our hotel in Pensacola.
Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow. In the mean time, we’re doing carry out dinners.
We had extra time today and decided to us it visiting the hard core tourist area (where every admission to each building needs a different (expensive) ticket. It was fun and we learned stuff, but the fort was the better visit for me. We drove to Lake City, FL. I got a cough, then aches, then the shivers. Danita and I practically had masks glued to our faces thee whole time. Fortunately, the first COVID test was negative. Here’s hoping. And here’s a few pics on the web site. Plus two pics below specifically for Ryn.
