On the road again!

After the last minute packing, making sure that we had everything (as of this moment in time we have not found that we are missing anything) and farewell taking of Cindy and John we were on the road again by a little after 9:30am. We thought that rush hour might be over by 9:30 and so picked that as our target.

Traffic wasn't bad but when one is towing a trailer, even only a 20-foot trailer, one wishes that there was no traffic on the road save himself!  ;o)

We could have stopped at a rest area at 11:00am but decided to continue for another hour. Wrong decision. As the passenger I kept dozing off but Tom was having the same problem as I was. We will know better the next time. Even just to "stretch your legs" is a good reason to stop.

We decided to have one of our infamous by now PB&J lunches: made in the trailer at the rest area and eaten in the van as we travel. We usually have carrots and celery with our sandwiches but we had a banana today thanks to Cindy. It's nutritious but weird.

Over 222 miles after we left Cindy and John we arrived at our haven of rest for the night after 1:30pm. Huge place and we are parked right across from the wash house and swimming pool!! Didn't get in today though; other things to do.

Armed with just a bus route folder we took the bus into San Antonio hoping to find the Alamo and whatever there was to see and to get dinner. But we got off the bus at the wrong stop which was no where near where we thought we wanted to be. We thought for a while taking into account the time of day and what we had been through so far and decided to take the bus in the other direction to go back to the Mission Concepcion which we had passed on our way into downtown San Antonio.

We are very glad we did. There were a number of people around when we got off the bus (we could see the grounds as we got off of the bus) but they seemed to have disappeared when we arrived at the signs and discriptive placques on the grounds. Mission Concepcion is one of I think 7 missions started by the Franciscans to convert the indigenous people to Christianity/Catholicism and make them Spanish citizens. It is now part of the National Park system and an active congregation. Of all of the missions in the area this one is the most authentic, having most of it's parts that were built in the 1700s still standing. A stop in the park office told us that we had less than an hour before the park closed and we would be asked to leave. That was okay with us. We were tired.

We were to enter the church into what was evidently the sacristy and into the chancel but not behind the Communion rail. That area was roped off and we were asked to observe the sacred space of the congregation that worships there. All of the doors except for the main door into the nave were not very high. Tom is about 5'10" and he had to duck his head. The main door was massive, about 8'-9' tall. All around the art work is being restored. The rooms where the side altars were were small and you could see the artwork being penciled on the wall in preparation for painting. There was a very large stone basin in one of the walls and we wondered if this was a baptistry although there seemed to be a baptismal font in the chancel area. The pews were rough hewn boards but they shined as though there was a finish on them. I think there was. Something I thought was funny was that I'll swear you could see the outline of someone's posterior part on some of these wooden slabs made into the pews. We took lots of pictures. It was a very interesting place.

We took the bus back to the RV Park and made dinner. Tom then went for gas as I tried to set up the trailer for sleeping and clean up from eating. We spent some time outside as the temp had dropped and the breeze was still strong enough to blow the newspaper around so that Tom had a hard time reading it. Soon we came inside for Tom to do the book work and head off to bed. I'm still pulling together the pieces of the day.

The bookwork showed this little tidbit of news: Officially we have traveled 1999.3 miles since we left home for this trip.  geesh!

Tomorrow we have a much longer ride to Fort Stocton, TX. There is a beautiful National Park there, Big Bend I think, but it is a long trip to get to it and that isn't in our plans. We are headed for New Mexico for the weekend.

EDIT by Tom: Just one small correction here; it was late when bk wrote this. Las Cruces, NM, will just be a waypoint tomorrow (Thurs.) on our way to Tucson, AZ for the weekend.