100th Anniversary of the National Park Service

From last August to this August, the National Park Service has been celebrating 100 years of protecting, preserving, and presenting our national treasures.  During that entire year, Mark and I had not gone to even one park, until yesterday.

Since it was Shabbat, we had to do something that didn't cost money, so yesterday we visited the San Antonio Missions National Park.  It is four missions along the San Antonio river built in the early 1700s by Spanish Franciscans to convert the Indians and to protect themselves and the Indians from the more warlike tribes of the Apache and Comanche who were making war on the local, peaceful hunter-gatherer Coahuiltecan Indians in south Texas.  The Alamo was also one of those missions, but it is not under the National Park Service.  This string of five missions, each three miles from the other, is unique in the country.

We started at Mission San Jose, the middle of the string of five, because it is the most fully restored and the one with the Visitor Center.  Since all four of the missions of the National Park are active parish churches today, we were only able to go in to two out of four.  One was closed for no apparent reason (San Juan Capistrano) and the other had a wedding in it (Mission Espada).  At San Jose there was a huge mass on the lawn inside the walls of the mission.  When we got there, the service was over and many were leaving, but it was still a party atmosphere with a live band singing on a stage, Christian music, of course.  There were gift shops and snack bar kiosks set up.  It was quite a lively to do!  Mission Concepcion was quiet, and we were able to tour inside quite nicely.

Today we are heading back down to the Alamo Plaza.  We are taking the one hour narrated trolley tour, the 40 minute narrated boat ride up the San Antonio River, and visiting the Buckhorn Saloon and Museum, which includes the Texas Rangers and Trail Drivers Museum.  That will do it for San Antonio.  Tomorrow morning we are heading through Austin briefly to see the capitol building and then beginning the tour north through the Panhandle in San Angelo.

I had a great day yesterday in calories, only 1437.  We walked almost 3 miles in the missions, and I did 30 minutes of water aerobics in the pool when we returned.  It was National Cheesecake day, so we brought back a small piece of plain cheesecake from Denny's, and I ate half for my bedtime snack.  That was included in the 1437.  Finally I have dropped some weight.  I am down 2.3 pounds this morning to 266.5.  I was very happy to see that.  I have several little milestones to meet along the way.  265 is the first.  That's what I weighed when we returned from our tour of South Dakota in July of 2014.  I'm getting close to that one! Tomorrow morning will be my official weigh-in, and I expect it to be the same or a little bit less than today.  There is no reason why today will not also be a good day.

Here are some pictures from yesterday.

Seven stamps from one place!

We have now visited all five missions.

Lots of people at Mission San Jose today.

Beautiful altar

Quiet at this one today.

Frescoes on the ceilings and walls have been cleaned up and exposed.

The white church was closed to visitors today with no explanation.  It was originally a food storehouse in the mission.  They used a wooden church because the stone one was never finished.

Wall of what was supposed to become the church.

Only one with this sort of brick arch, small bricks.

Except for the big church, which had a wedding in it today, this place is mostly ruins.

Crossing the San Antonio river near Mission Espada.

Then some pool time at the Best Western.

Mark got a new belt buckle.

Remember the Alamo!

Yesterday we made it to the Alamo in San Antonio.  Wow!  It was quite amazing.

From Nacogdoches to Goliad, we have been following a set tour in the Fodor's Guide to the Old West, a tour book I bought Mark years ago.  It has driving tours around different themes for every old west state.  The first time we used it was in 2009 in Kansas.  We have also used it for the driving tours we did of Nevada, Arizona, and South Dakota.  Last year we went to Hawaii instead, which is why we are doing two states, Texas and New Mexico, this summer.   Texas had three tours, so we chose to do two of them.

This tour was centered around the Texas Trail for Independence.  Oddly, it did not include coming to San Antonio for the Alamo.  It also did not have Houston for San Jacinto or Gonzales where the first shots were fired. We added the Houston part,  and yesterday we added three nights in San Antonio.  Monday we are adding Austin for just a day to see the state capitol before going to San Angelo and starting the next Texas tour, the Panhandle.  We are driving north from San Angelo to Amarillo for that tour.

The Texas Independence Trail was fabulous.  We did it in the order the tour book had it, but in order of the battles, we were sort of mixed up.  The order of the main battles would have been Gonzales (which we did not do), Alamo,  Goliad, and San Jacinto. I was really surprised by how fast the Texans won their independence from the much larger and well-equipped Mexican army. The first shot was fired at the Mexicans at Gonzales on October 2, 1835 and Santa Anna surrendered at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, just over six months.  I never knew that. Of course, the Texans had Sam Houston, who was truly brilliant.

Before heading to San Antonio, we started yesterday morning by driving nine miles out of Goliad to the little town of Fannin.  It is named for Col. Fannin because it was on that land that the Mexicans attacked his regiment.  He surrendered to the Mexicans, thinking his men would be safely held as prisoners of war.  They were marched back to Presidio La Bahia win Goliad, held as prisoners in the church for a few days, told they would be released, but actually taken out and shot.  I posted those pictures yesterday from Presidio La Bahia.   One of the survivors of the Goliad massacre went back three months later and put up a pile of rocks where Fannin had surrendered.  Fifty-eight years later the landowner replaced the rocks with a giant cotton gin screw to mark the spot.  The next landowner donated a large portion of his land to make a little park there and preserve the history of that battle.

We had been warned the Alamo wasn't spectacular anymore because it's part of downtown San Antonio now and surrounded by big buildings and stores.  True.  Much of the original Alamo land is now a huge multi-story post office building, public streets, and kitschy stores like Ripley's Believe it or Not, Guinnes Book of World Records Museum, Trolley Tour sales, Visitor Center, and restaurants. That didn't bother us at all.  As we walked through the church that everyone thinks is all there is of the Alamo plus the museum inside the Long Barracks and the gardens and grounds that are left, Mark and I were both impressed and moved by it.  Maybe it is because we have been steeped in the history of the Texas War for Independence for over a week, but we were quite impressed with the whole thing.

No pictures are allowed inside the Alamo church or the Long Barracks museum.  That was unfortunate because both were spectacular.  Some of the artifacts in the museum were amazing such as a locket of Davy Crockett's hair, Travis' little book of poetry, and two rifles.  One was a rifle owned by Davy Crockett.  The other was a replica of Crockett's rifle presented to Fess Parker.  Parker later donated his rifle to this museum, so seeing the two together was interesting.

Today is Shabbat, so we will not spend money.  The Mission Trail, nine missions along the San Antonio river, is free.  One of them is a National Park, so we can use our Golden Pass to get in everywhere free, and I can get a stamp.  Our plan today is to drive up that mission trail, get a stamp, use our gift card to eat at Subway, and then come back to the hotel to relax, read, and use the pool later in the afternoon.  It should be a lovely day.

I ate 1420 calories yesterday, walked 2.5 miles, and kept my weight the same as yesterday.  Today my calories will be perfect again, and there should be some walking and some water aerobics.  Maybe tomorrow I can show a little drop.

Here are pictures from Fannin and the Alamo.

Mark on the spot of Fannin's surrender.

Wearing the shirt Cindy bought for him in San Antonio on her visit.  He changed in the Subway at lunch!

Remember the Alamo!  I don't think I'll ever forget.

The Long Barracks

The start of the phrase "draw a line in the sand."

Mark is listening to the wand for the audio tour that we rented.  He's wondering if he's standing on the right side of the line!  Of course, the docents can only guess if this is the actual spot where Travis drew the line in the sand.

Re-enactors were standing in the garden, giving talks, and firing the rifles.  VERY LOUD!

Six large panels are time lines of events from the early mission days of Texas all the way up to  the 1900s and the restoration of the Alamo.

Painting of the early morning battle at the Alamo.

We ended the day back in the Visitor Center across the street just to use the restrooms, but I couldn't resist having Mark pose with Fess Parker.  

Blue Bell, La Grange, Goliad

This morning my weight is up, so no, I didn't get that wish of two days down in a row.  I'm up six-tenths.  Not a lot, but still...

I had 1430 calories, 89 under my daily limit right now, which is 1519.  I walked about 2 miles around the various places today.  That's not a lot, so I did not add any calories for exercise.  I am suspecting that even though Lose It! thinks that I can lose two pounds a week on 1500 calories, my body actually cannot.  When eating in restaurants three meals a day, it is difficult to stay around 1200.  Although it worked for me in 2009, seven years later, I feel like it is harder to lose weight now than it was then.  Over 65 and post-cancer treatment has probably changed things.

We started the day off in Brenham at the Blue Bell Creamery.  We saw that listed as a thing to see in Brenham, so we started the day there.  Although they no longer give tours through the actual factory, there is still a wonderful exhibit center with lots of videos.  We watched two videos, one on the history and one on the manufacturing process.  Blue Bell is sold in Publix in Florida, but we almost never buy ice cream, so we had not noticed it.  Also it does not have a kosher symbol on it, so when we do buy ice cream, we look for that.  Mark read these ingredients and after seeing the manufacturing process video said that he would buy it now.  The ice cream parlor upstairs serves generous scoops in a cup for only one dollar.  The lady in the exhibit area was stunned to hear we had never tasted Blue Bell before, so she called upstairs and told them to give us the original homemade vanilla one for free.  So for a buck we also bought a strawberry. I checked the calorie counts on the labels that were displayed and counted those calories.  It was awesome ice cream!  I also finally broke down and bought my first mug of the trip.  I got all the way to day ten before I bought a mug!  Not bad.

Then off to La Grange and Monument Hill.  The men who drew the black beans at Ciudad Meir near Salado in 1843 and were executed are all buried together here along with men killed at the Dawson massacre in 1842. These battles were part of skirmishes between the Texas Republic and Mexico over a border dispute.  Mexico claimed the border at one river and Texas claimed it at the Rio Grande. Five years later, one of the white bean survivors exhumed the bodies of his fallen comrades and relocated them, along with the Dawson men, to this site for a proper burial attended by over a thousand people. There was also a beautiful overlook of the Colorado River.  No, not THAT Colorado river.

Next stop, and the end of this Fodor's Tour of the Old West, was Goliad, the site of the massacre of hundreds of Texan prisoners under Colonel Fannin's command in 1836.  They were following their orders to retreat to the nearby town of Victoria from the Presidio in Goliad.  Unfortunately, they had only gone six miles when they were surprised and attacked by the Mexican army.  They surrendered and were held in the chapel at the Presidio for a few days.  Finally, they were told the ones not wounded would be released and allowed to return home.  That was a lie.  Santa Anna had ordered them all killed.  They were marched out in three separate directions so no one saw what was coming.  All were killed.  The wounded were taken into the courtyard inside the Presidio and executed one by one, including Col. Fannin.  A few escaped and a few were smuggled out by a lady called the "Angel of Goliad."When news of this massacre traveled around Texas, the cry of Remember the Alamo was joined with a new one, Remember Goliad.  The battle of San Jacinto, which is where we started or tour, finally sealed Texas' independence and captured Santa Anna.

The bodies of these men were either burned or left to lie where they fell.  Three months later, their ashes and bones were gathered together and buried in a mound just outside the Presidio.  In 1938 a large monument was erected on the mound.  That was our last stop of the day.

Today we are going to the battle site where Fannin's men were surprised and captured, just a few miles from here in what is now the town of Fannin.  Then off to San Antonio!  Sunday we will be at the Alamo where everything started.

Before Blue Bell, we stopped at a local grocery for a few things, and I fell in love with this rocking chair.  Very comfortable, but not something I can take home today!

The men who died in the Dawson massacre.

The men who drew the black bean at Salado.

The Colorado River

The chapel on the side of Presidio La Bahia

On the grounds inside the Presidio, near this marker, the wounded, including Col. Fannin, were executed.  Fannin asked for three things that he expected his rank entitled him: not to be shot in the face, to send his belongings back to his family, to give him a proper Christian burial.  He got none of those.  They shot  him in the face, stole his belongings, and burned his body.

Outside the Presidio, the oldest and most completely restored, intact Presidio in the USA.

The monument behind the Presidio where the bodies of the hundreds of executed men were buried together a few months later.  The big monument was erected a bit over a 100 years later with all their names carved on it.