Remember the Alamo - Day 1 - The Gulf Coast

10/9/16, “The Gulf Coast”

San Antonio, Texas

There it is, the little fortified mission whose siege helped win a revolution and provided the title of this trip.  Remember the Alamo.  That’s it, and I did not expect it to be so small.  It is maybe a quarter of the size I thought it was, perhaps no bigger than a basketball court and not much taller than the net.  I spent almost the entirety of the day driving down the Gulf Coast of Texas and back up from the southernmost point to San Antonio.  It was an exhausting but enjoyable day, and I got to see two National Park Sites that I never expected to see when I first planned this trip.

At first, when we discussed this trip, I thought it would just be a three-day weekend in San Antonio and Houston, so the additional NPS units along the Gulf Coast I was able incorporate today were a bonus.  My coworkers teased me about the fact that I am spending four days in Texas when most of my international trips are shorter.  This will be a fun trip, rather than one where I cram as much as possible into as short of a time.  Yes, we will be doing a lot, but, if I was doing the trip solo, I would have included more sites or shaved a day off of the overall trip length.  My mother had no interest in the two sites I saw today, nor would the idea of driving 11 hours to get a few stamps have interested her.  That was why I flew into IAH last night and picked her up at SAN tonight.

After I closed last night, I soon fell asleep, waking up past 7 AM in a panic.  I had overslept.  I was fine on time, but metered parking had begun at 7 AM, and I was thirty minutes late.  I raced downstairs, relieved to see no ticket on my car, and paid the meter.  I then got ready, opting for cargo pants and my Nike slides, which were on their last legs.  I headed down for breakfast, opting for a Texas breakfast burrito and coffee.  I was pleasantly surprised with the burrito.

I was on the road a little before 9 AM.  Once I got on the highway, as is my tradition, I lit up a Davidoff Yamasa Toro and put on Taylor’s album Red.  After keeping with the Y, I lit up a Yaxil Ortiz.  After about three hours of driving down the Gulf Coast, I was soon at Padre Island.  It is a huge recreational area, and the federally protected area had a nice beach.  To me, it was just another stamp.  I would not be spending a day on the beach.  I had a tight schedule.

My NPS pass had expired, so I needed to renew it at the entrance station.  It was a bit of a drive from the entrance to the island to the VC, and I had not quite factored that into my timing, but I had allowed plenty of time, and I was at the VC with a hard 12:30 PM arrival.  I knew that I needed a hard 1 PM departure from the VC, but I did not anticipate needing more than half an hour.  I did my business at the VC.  Then I lit up a Montecristo and took my ceremonial pictures on the beach.  Padre Island was actually a pretty impressive natural feature, but the beach was just a beach.  The ceremonial pictures served their purpose, and my footwear was now wet and sandy.

I would later learn that the hardening of the salt water would break the slides, which had been to dozens of countries with me and will now travel no more.  That was that.  I made my hard 1 PM departure and began to make my way further down the Gulf Coast, all the way to the southernmost tip.  I picked up some snacks at the gas station, along with popcorn chicken and a steak quesadilla for lunch (and a Dr. Pepper, a Texas original).  Again, all quite good.  I switched to Avril’s next album, The Best Damn Thing, for the drive to Palo Alto.   I drove straight, only stopping for a bathroom break, smoking an Aroma de Cuba followed by a Fuente.  The park would close at 5 PM, and that meant they kicked people out at 5 PM.  I was good with a hard 4:15 PM arrival.

Again, I did my business at the VC, learning some interesting titbits about this first battle of the Mexican-American War.  Our forces were commanded by future-President Taylor, but General Taylor was assisted by a certain Lieutenant Grant.  Yes, that Grant.  I lit up a Surrogates and walked the battlefield trail, took my ceremonial picture, and walked back.  As required, I had a hard 5 PM departure.  My mother would be landing at SAN around 9:30 PM, and it was a 4-hour drive to the airport.

That gave me time for dinner.  After I finished the Surrogates, I wasn’t hungry, so I lit up a Tosanao and kept going.  There was a CBP checkpoint, and the border control officer did a brief once-over of my car before waving me on.  After the Toscano, I stopped at a Whataburger for dinner, getting a full meal of a burger, onion rings, and a shake.  My reader would right in anticipating my description of the meal as “quite good.”  It was.

I then continued straight on to the airport, on cruise control and the same highway almost the entire drive.  It was an easy drive, and I made good time, beating my mom to Hertz’s.  She arrived soon after I did, and we added her name to the reservation.  It was a short drive to our hotel in San Antonio, which was adjacent to the Alamo.  The hotel is the tall building in the establishing shot above.  We were in a bit of a rush to get to the room before SNL began, but I had to take a picture of the Alamo.  I was able to get to the front in the Alamo in less than a minute by foot from the entrance to the hotel.

We went up to the room and got situated in time for SNL, which opened with a perfect parody of the VP debate and Trump’s recent “October surprise”, which has caused me to withdraw my support for him.  After Weekend Update, I got ready and went downstairs.  I headed to the Alamo and sat down across from it, where I lit up my new Ardor and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish and get some sleep.  Tomorrow I get to say, “Mainland US Complete” again.