Day 60 - The Alamo

I woke up at 8.30am & Jackie was still asleep. The room couldn’t have been that bad! Jackie woke up at 9.00 & alleged she had been up all night & was bitten by bedbugs.

We got ready quickly & vacated our room in record time & loaded up the car. Now, the big advantage of choosing location over cleanliness is that we were able to take a short walk to The Alamo. Car parks were charging $10 & $15 to park nearby!

Despite my fear, we were able to purchase an audio tour for $7 each. We then headed in & listened to the 26 audio segments as we walked through the church & grounds of The Alamo. It is always a slightly surreal feeling, standing in the spot where such a momentous historical event took place.

I’m embarrassed to say the I had forgotten that Davy Crockett was killed at The Alamo. Colonel Travis, Crockett & 183 other US soldiers were attacked by a Mexican Army of 2,500 fighters. The US soldiers bravely defended The Alamo for 13 days, but on 6th March 1836, the Mexican Army overran them & killed every US soldier. (The story is told much better in my Song of the Day, well it would have done, it was The Ballad of the Alamo by Marti Robbins, but Jackie made me change it). It is quite a sobering, yet inspiring series of events.

We returned to Doodle & headed out, but took a brief diversion to drive past San Fernando De Bexar Cathedral & the Spanish Governor’s Palace. I pulled over in the bus lane & managed to upset one bus driver, not once, but twice!

We then picked up & headed out on Interstate 10 towards El Paso, oh no! Fortunately we turned off at a very quaint town called Comfort established by German Freethinkers. We had lunch in ‘comfort’ in a cafe called Highs. I had a meaty ciabatta & Jackie had a salmon bagel, which she got about half the way through. The town had several award winning wineries, but it was a bit too early for that.

We continued on to Kerrville & had a stroll along a ‘natural’ river walk. The Guadalupe River flows through Kerrville & following a great flood in the 1930s, Tranquility Island was created. We walked to Tranquility Island & back. Kids supervised by their parents were swimming in the river. Kerrville had been recommended to us by Kelly at Marathon.

After driving through the Historic District, we headed north towards Fredericksburg on the Texas 16. A couple of miles out of Kerrville, we turned off for one of my funny little stops, The Coming King Sculpture Prayer Garden. Apart from the huge empty cross, the rest of the grounds appeared to be boarded up.

We continued to Fredericksburg, a place we had been recommended by the couple we met at the busy frozen custard shop in St. George, Utah. We fell in love with Fredericksburg the moment we arrived. Jackie had identified 2 quite expensive hotels for us to look at. One was full, so we went to the other, the Fredericksburg Inn & Suites, which had a nice pool. It was just after 3.00pm & when we asked for a room, the receptionist quoted $159: we settled on $129, pool view etc etc.

We took advantage of the free soft drinks, water, & spent over 3 hours in the sun at the pool. I had not applied enough face cream throughout the day & was looking like Simon Weston! After getting ready to go down town, Jackie insisted the she powder my face. I looked like the ‘Tin Man’ in the Wizard of Oz.

With the powder rubbed in we hit downtown Fredericksburg. It was fantastic, Main Street was full of bars & restaurants playing live music. After walking up & down, we settled on El Milagro 20/12, which had a decent live band, Kemosahbee (various spellings) which is a term of endearment for the Lone Ranger’s sidekick, Tonto.

We had a couple of beers & shared a plate of Buffalo Wings. At 10.00pm, we tipped the band, who were very grateful & wanted to shake our hands, particularly because we were from England. Back at our super clean hotel, we had a wine outside, I got bitten on my ankle & we retreated indoors.

Song of the Day - Remember the Alamo by Johnny Cash.

Bonus Song of the Day :-

Ballad of the Alamo by Marty RobbinsRead more