The San Antonio River Walk, The Alamo and the San Antonio Missions National Park.

 A good day of sight-seeing today with the Machidas.

We drove to San Antonio's River Walk area and explored the scenes and views of this thankfully uncrowded tourist attraction.

CasaRio Restaurant, the oldest on the River Walk

and where we would do lunch.

Our guides

Of course, we checked out The Alamo:

Bridget and Davy Crockett

The Six Flags of Texas

Looking back towards the front of The Alamo

The Alamo, back in the day....

A couple of things that amused me in The Alamo's gift shop:

There were several statues in the area around The Alamo:

The Yellow Rose of Texas

Jim Bowie

Another section of the River Walk

Torch of Friendship

The Star Gazer

After lunch we checked out the Missions belonging to the Missions National Park:

San Jose Mission

At the San Francisco de la Espada Mission:

A painting of the Mission from "back in the day"

Next was the San Juan Mission:

At this point, Martha declared "We've accomplished the Mission!".  That pun got us laughing and we all returned to the car for the ride back to Hondo.  Traffic was quite heavier on the way out of San Antonio but eventually we made our escape.

My thanks to RichardM and Bridget for taking the time to show us the sights!

A Drive to the Cowboy Capital of the World: Bandera, TX

Martha and I drove the Honda CR-V the 30+ miles or so to Bandera, TX today, to check out the sights of this small town with such a big claim.

Bandera: Spanish word for Flag.  Interesting name for a town don't you think?  One of the plaques below should explain things better.

After a brief stop for Martha to get her giggles at the Trump Store:

photo by Martha

We visited the town's Frontier Museum.  Here's some of the stuff that caught my eye among the many, many items from "back in the day".  

A safe made out of a large canon's breech.

It being the Chinese Lunar New Year, we had lunch at the local Chinese restaurant.  it was "OK".

The Heritage Park had this statue of a Cowboy in action along with informative plaques about the town, its title and some history:

A mural next to the heritage park:

Of course, many stores selling souvenirs and knick-knacks for the tourists.

photo by Martha

A representative example of the several stores' offerings

photo by Martha

The Antiques store had a "plethora" of rather diverse stuff...lots to see if you've got the time to wander its vast collections.

photo by Martha

Martha seemed fascinated by the vintage Tupperware....

photo by Martha

We returned to camp by mid-afternoon.  RichardM once again fed us a nice dinner in the evening.  A good day!

Back in Hondo, TX - New Awnings thanks to RichardM!

 February 5

The roof tiles were delivered this morning, I didn't think they'd do it since the roof was snow-covered but it was no big deal to the delivery team!

In less than an hour, while I putzed about the garage, they cleared space on the roof, nailed down some 2x4s, and then stacked piles of new roof tiles!

February 6-7:

We left the cesspool that is the Metro Denver area just shy of 8:00 AM and would be settling into our hotel room in Lubbock, TX by dark.  Long day, we were tired and I was crabby.

Enroute, while passing through Amarillo, TX, we briefly stopped in windy conditions to take pics at the Cadillac Ranch:

We got a nice dawn sunrise to send us on our way from Lubbock:

photo courtesy Martha

We made it to Hondo, TX a bit before 2:00 PM, no issues except for one wrong turning due to Google Maps being confused.

RichardM cooked us a delicious Chicken Marsala dinner that evening.  Thanks RichardM!

February 8 - Awning Day

Today we spent the day installing the replacement awning on the right side of the VRRV.  This is the one I damaged by being too close to a picnic table shelter while in the Big Bend NP last month.  Only the awning itself was replaced, the roller wasn't damaged enough to need replacement, thankfully.  RichardM had pointed out that I didn't need to unbend the area that got dented, just use the other two channels for the new awning.

RichardM and I took about 90 minutes to accomplish the task, something that apparently can take only 15 minutes on a Youtube video that he had found.  

No major issues encountered, a couple of small issues resolved by RichardM and now we have a working brand new awning:

RichardM in supervisory mode

After lunch, we tackled the window awning for the slideout's window on the left side of the VRRV.  It'll come in handy for those sunny days to keep the sun out but still let us keep the windows open for ventilation.  Before, I was using Reflectix material to block the sun but it also blocked fresh air!

No major issues encountered, except for not finding studs behind the slideout's outer wall even though the stud sensor said there were studs.  No worries though, the 17 screws used to mount the awning's rail will be quite sufficient.

Yep, the brand new awning's bright color highlights the faded white of the rest of the VRRV, but it's all good.

Home in time for some Snow

Wednesday, January 31

RichardM and Bridget took me in their Jeep to the San Antonio airport this morning so I could catch at flight back to the overcrowded cesspool that is the Metro Denver area.

I'll be here a few days to take care of some stuff with the VA, some legal paperwork to be signed for family matters and to prepare to take the 2014 Honda CR-V (now aka Harriet) south along with Martha.

Saturday, February 3

Snow Day!  It snowed, sometimes heavily, most of the day, tapering off by mid-afternoon.  Heavy, wet snow which made the snow blower work harder.

Still, I got Scarlett out for a short ride for snow-clad trees pictures.  I also wanted to "try out" the Magic Eraser function of magicstudio.com and object remover tool from picwish.com.  I must say, they work pretty damn good!

Below is the low-res, watermarked version one can download from magicstudio for free.  It should give you some idea of how nicely it erases things.  In the below pic's case, I got rid of the houses in the background and objects behind the fence.

Another magicstudio erasing example.  I got rid of the stop sign in the pic above along with the houses in the background.

The below pic was edited using a different online tool from picwish.com, they allow a free download in a larger size and no watermark.

picwish

Magicstudio allowed me to erase the brickwork and landscaping structure in the above pic.

Here's picwish's version of object erasing:

A rather mono-chromatic kind of day eh.  Not too cold, things were melting nicely as I returned home, making things slushy on the roads.  It should prove quite icy tonight when things freeze up!