Tuesday: April 9
Waco to San Antonio,A Wet Drive Back
Texas weather is very strange.
When we got up, there was the usual slate-gray sky and light rain. When we got down to the lobby, we found that the outside fire pit was again cold, dark, and unhappy.
This time, breakfast was better organized, probably because the earlier group had gone through breakfast a few hours earlier. After breakfast, we went back up and packed up our stuff. On the bus ride up to Waco, I had been marginally cold. This time, particularly as it was overcast and damp, I put on my fleece shirt, and put my sweatshirt in my backpack. When we came down, it was absolutely pouring out. The main saving grace was that there was an overhang outside the hotel, so we could board the bus without getting rained on.
We were near the end of the line boarding, so we ended up in the rear of the bus. I was startled to find that the roof of the bus was leaking. One of the seats was soaked, and there was a puddle on the floor. The four of us got some of the last four dry seats there were. Some people went in the row behind us, and the person by the window found out the hard way that there was also a leak there, that seat was soaked, and now her bottom was all wet as well. We were not impressed. Later we heard that the bathroom was also quite wet.
There was a bit of an issue as it seemed that there was just enough seats on the bus for all of the people, so it you removed the soaked seats, there were not enough seats left.
We ended up leaving rather later than expected, because they had to bring one (or more) of the other buses over, and several people from our bus were sent to one of the other buses. Finally, it was all settled, and we headed back to San Antonio.
At one point we went through a fairly large puddle, and there was a wave going past our window. We joked that we had never been in a bus with a bow wave before. I was wondering what we would do in San Antonio. Would we just hunker down in our room? Would we put rain gear on and brave the River Walk?
The bus had a strange layout. Most of the seats faced forward, but one row was facing backwards, so you had (on each side of the aisle) two seats facing two seats. The four of us sat in the front-facing seats and others sat in the rear-facing seats. A very pleasant guy sat opposite me. He was a teacher who was semi-retired, and who taught astronomy and physics. Since we were both interested in such things, we had a very nice conversation all the way back.
Halfway back, the rain tapered off. Then the clouds got lighter. Then the sun began to peek through. By the time we got to San Antonio, it was mostly sunny with some clouds and no expectation of rain. This is what I mean that the weather here was strange. For the past few days, it started out with solid overcast and varying amounts of rain, but by the afternoon, it ended up being partly to mostly sunny.
We got to San Antonio about 3:30. They said that the rooms were not yet ready, but we could park our luggage in the ballroom, go about our business, and come back and check in later.
Amy and I parted from John and Pam and set out in search of a late, small lunch. We tried going to Casa Rio, as their watermelon drink would have been wonderful. I figured that on a Tuesday, after the eclipse, in the middle of the afternoon, there shouldn’t be much of a wait.
Hah! They still said that the wait would be 45 minutes to an hour or more. We said no thanks. Amy really wanted to go to the Tower of the Americas, and she was worried that if we got there too late, they might again say that they were sold out. We wanted something small, as dinner was not that far in the future, and we wanted quick, so we ended up just going to a McD’s.
At that point, Amy suddenly remembered that she had left her city pass in her luggage. She didn’t want to hike back to get it, so she figured that she would just pay the $15 outright. We started walking over to the tower. I was trying to find the shadiest route, as I was worried about sun exposure, and also because it was just hot. Halfway there, I had a thought. I asked Amy if she had some form of the pass on her phone. It turns out that she did, so she could show the code to the clerk at the tower, and use the pass without having it on paper.
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The tower was OK but not earth-shattering. You couldn’t really see the River Walk. You could just see an area with a bit more trees than other areas. After we did the loop around the top, we went back down to their “4-D” theater. This was a 3-D movie (polarized glasses) where the seats bounce around a bit. We thought that there was a 1-hour movie, and I was concerned that we would have to wait a long time before the next showing, but it turns out that there are really 3 20-minute shorts. Unfortunately, the one that we were most interested in (Ice Age) was just ending when we got there, so we had to watch the other two before getting to that one.
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We got out about 5, and I looked up the best route to the Alamo on Google Maps. It said that it was open until 5:15, and it would be about a 14 minute walk to get there. We set out. When we got there, we found out that it seemed to close at 5:30, although I think the church stopped letting people in at 5. But at least Amy could wander around the complex a bit.
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We figured that we had enough time to go back to the hotel, check in, bring our bags to our room, and then head out for dinner. We proceeded to do this. John and Pam were going to meet us at the restaurant.
I wasn’t exactly sure of the name of the restaurant, but I thought it was Acenar. I looked it up and found Acenar on the River Walk. I got directions and we headed out. We would just get there in time for the reservation. Amy really didn’t think that Google was taking us to the right place. Along with her doubts, the location didn’t seem to match what John had described in vague terms. So I checked Google maps again, and I found that there were two Acenars! There was the one that I had been aiming at, and there was “Acenar Mexican Restaurant”. That seemed to match where John had described and what Amy was thinking was the right direction. So we went there and were only a minute or two late. It would have been much worse if we had gone to the wrong one, and then found John and Pam weren’t there, and found that we were totally in the wrong spot.
Dinner was very nice. It was a good last-meal together. The deserts looked good, but the others wanted ice cream, so I got a desert there (along with decaf coffee), and afterwards, we went down the River Walk to a Ben and Jerry’s, and the other three got ice cream cones.
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We continued strolling while they ate their cones, and eventually we returned to the hotel. We said our good byes. They were leaving earlier than we were, so we wouldn’t be seeing them in the morning. I wanted to check out a dam that John and Pam had visited earlier, which I thought was about 10 minute walk downstream. I was rather mistaken. Rather than being 10 minutes downstream, it was really only just barely over a block downstream. Amy thought that there was some sort of water taxi that went down to the missions and back, but there is no way that it could go with all of the large and small dams in the way.
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I went back to the hotel, and I’m writing this up. Tomorrow should be a relatively mellow morning. Our flight is at 1:30, so we don’t need to be there until about 11:30, so we don’t need to leave here until around 11.
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I said that the weather here was nuts!
After writing this up, I got ready for bed. But then we heard the wind pick up and the sound of rain. We opened the curtain, and it is once again absolutely pouring out! We saw flashes of lightning and buckets of water pouring out of the sky. We are happy that we are here and not still out wandering from dinner, as I hadn’t packed any rain gear when we went to dinner, because I thought the rain was done for the day.
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I can just imagine what would have happened if we had gone back to the tower to see the city at night, come out, started walking the mile back to the hotel, and then to have this thunderstorm open up around us, with us having no rain gear with us.