I have so much to say upon my return to the great north Texas area that at the risk of losing anyone with 1000's of words in one blog, I'll break everything down into a couple of shorter mini-blogs if you will.
In reverse chronological order
We blew in with a little help from Rita on Thursday afternoon after spending the night in Salado, Texas, a shopper's paradise, just north of Austin. We had been following the hurricane reports throughout our combination vacation/buying trip and I decided when I awoke at our unchanged wakeup time of 4:00 am that it might be a good idea to fill the car up with gasoline. There was a station near the StageCoach Inn where we spent the night and already a line was forming at the pumps. I paid $2.69 a gallon which had been pretty much the norm for the entire week. It wasn't so much the surprise of seeing the number of people at the pumps that caught my attention, it was the number of cars on the highway at that time. Interstate 35, which is the highway we were on, runs north from San Antonio to Dallas. It runs somewhat parallel to Interstate 45 which comes out of Houston with both roads converging in Dallas. I figured it was going to be a long time getting home and Pattye and I decided after a couple of hours of shopping we had better start making our way on the last leg of our journey. Sure enough, as soon as we got north of Waco, the traffic became bumper to bumper and we began scouring the map for an alternate direction. After stopping in Hillsboro for a short nature break, (Pattye informed me that there was a long line to the ladies room at the local McDonald's), I saw cars stacked at the adjacent Super Eight motel loaded with what appeared to be hastily packed belongings and people literally cooking in the parking lot. I met a family from Houston who had evacuated their home and were heading for Plano and gave them an alternate direction to avoid the traffic mess that was soon to get worse. After making some adjustments and heading west to ultimately get north we finally made it to our abode to find it still there albeit with a lawn in desperate need of watering and mowing. Trip distance 991 miles.
San Antonio.......and the beautiful River Walk
If you haven't been, I recommend everyone spend some time in San Antonio. As a matter of fact, I suggest you visit San Antonio before you visit Dallas. As much as I love North Texas, I could easily move to San Antonio. Just recently, San Antonio moved ahead of Dallas as the eighth largest city in the U.S. moving Dallas to number nine. San Antonio has so much to offer and yet it doesn't seem like a huge metropolis. The beautiful River Walk which winds through the downtown area has all of the ambiance one could ask for to enjoy sightseeing, good food and lots of entertainment. We spent 3 days at the Westin Hotel located on a more quiet branch of the river but only a few minutes of walking to the endless numbers of restaurants, jazz bands, curio shops and the ever present Mariachi Bands. One evening while having dinner we were serenaded by a duo, a trumpeter and guitar player, who accommodated us with the only request we could think of at the time, "Gauntanamera". Naturally we sang along although substituting our own words at certain points.
El Mercado....."A Taste of Mexico"
As the name implies, El Mercado, "The Market", was one of our destinations on our 7-day trek of finding one of a kind items for Gathering Eggs. This several block area west of San Antonio is filled with hundreds of shops with thousand of hand-made, hand-painted, hand-tooled, crafts from Mexico. The smell of leather wafts through the winding aisles while pinatas hang from the rafters of many of the brightly painted stores. Pattye sought out a particular location where she had bought several items in the past. The brilliantly glazed Majolica earthenware and the
beautiful Talavera ceramics quickly filled my arms as I made an extra trip back to the car with loads of inventory for eventual sale in Dallas. Much, much, more.........
I have realized that I have written much more than I had intended and could go on endlessly and I have decided to save the rest for a later time. There is nothing worse than hearing about someone else's vacation and having to sit through a slide show for what seems like an eternity. So, in closing for now, I just want to say we had a great time, we bought a lot of "stuff", and we are looking forward to getting back in sync with working and enjoying our new careers, which reminds me, I have an interview with UPS in the morning. For those of you who have made it this far in my blog, I hope I haven't bored you. And, be sure to tune in next time to hear about the incredible amount of great items we saw in Fredericksburg, Blanco, Marble Falls and Gruene. So long for now!!
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