Remember the Alamo?

Goodbye Dallas. Who knows how long until I come around again.

We packed up quickly to get an early start, at least early for us. We took a driving break in Waco, to stop in at the Dr. Pepper Museum. That’s right, the Dr. Pepper Museum. This is exactly the kind of thing that my dear husband would do anything to avoid stopping at, and he’d probably be right. My daughters’ natural fear of creepy animatronic people talking to them at museums has just been upped a notch. Charles Alderton, otherwise known as “Doc”, was a pharmacist who came up with the soda combination that is now arguably the state drink of Texas. His statuary likeness gives a speech at the beginning of the museum tour that is sure to both creep out AND bore a kid right off the bat.

There were Dr. Pepper collectibles of every sort at the museum, though none of the screens show what I consider to be the hallmark of Dr. Pepper advertising: the commercial from the late 70s or early 80s where a group of people dances around, including on the walls (I think Lionel Richie stole the “Dancing on the Ceiling” thing from this commercial), singing “I’m a Pepper, He’s a Pepper, She’s a Pepper, We’re all Peppers, wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper too?” Yes, yes I would. Commercials tended to work quite well on me.

The highlight of the museum is obviously the actual soda fountain where you can get floats or sundaes with soda syrup, including Big Red. I’d forgotten all about Big Red, a red cream soda brand, but when I asked the lady at the counter if they still make it she looked at me like I was crazy. Of course they do. They sell it everywhere. And indeed, they sold it at the next gas station we stopped at. If it’s sold and/or advertised in Grand Rapids, I have managed to miss every sign of it. I had a Big Red float, which is something like a root beer float with added red #4 dye and some bubble gum flavoring for good measure. Andrew told me that it looked disgusting.

It’s sort of ironic that sodas mostly started out as medicinal items, sold at pharmacies (along with cigars, from what the displays told us), and are now being blamed for a host of health problems. It’s sort of like finding out that all your no-chemical Norwex cleaning products are the root cause of some of our worst diseases.

But we did not delay in Waco. San Antonio beckoned. By the way, if you are driving past a lot of cows in Texas, I highly recommend "Moo Song" by the 80s Texas band, The Judy's. (Yes, I know that apostrophe is misplaced, but that's how they roll.) It's a sort of lullaby-sounding song which is made up entirely of mooing. Guaranteed to make your kids wonder what other sides of you they don't know about.

The skies opened on us early on in the driving, and we drove through a lot of rain. This continued as we drove into San Antonio, with the added excitement of thunder and lightning as we entered the city. I’m just thankful none of that April Texas-sized hail ever came our way.

We found our way, eventually, to our hotel on the River Walk in downtown SA, the Drury Plaza, which got rave reviews from families on TripAdvisor. I didn’t get a reservation until last night, because I’d been waiting to see if the weather would cooperate even the tiniest bit. The Drury Plaza showed up on Travelocity for the first time last night, and at a lower price than many of the other hotels. This turned out to be a better deal than I thought, because they serve hot food and beverages of all kinds at a free afternoon social time, so dinner was free. Breakfast is also included. This will help the budget a bit! Times like this you find yourself encouraging your children to make total pigs of themselves at a public eating establishment. Go, eat more, eat more.

But before we tanked up we went to see the Alamo, walking there by way of the River Walk. I’ve been there before; my experience has been about 99 degrees in 99 percent humidity, so the cool, rainy day wasn’t all bad.

 

Since anything I’ve learned on previous visits to the Alamo is all but lost to the wind, I had a brand new learning experience once again. And it helped me sort of figure something out about this state. Texas has been under the control of France, Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the US, and the Confederacy. After all the battles for control over Texas, it finally became a state in 1845, and then Texas seceded from the Union again in 1860. What a lot of continuous turmoil. No wonder there is still a secessionist sector in the state. Old habits die hard, I guess.

The Alamo is where a battle was hard-fought and lost by Texans (born in Mexico, the US and Europe) who were rebelling against the Mexican government. At that point Texas was part of Mexico, but the President of Mexico terminated an agreement that allowed American colonists who settled in Mexican Texas to have rights as citizens of Mexico. He was trying to limit immigration to Texas and was making it difficult for those already in Texas. Which is interesting since that’s sort of what we are doing the other way now.  Around 200 people died defending the Alamo against much larger forces from Mexico. Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie were among those who gave their lives.

Well, that’s about as much education as we can handle in one sitting. We stopped in at the gift shop to marvel at a certain piece of candy—transparent suckers with a scorpion inside. You are intended to eat the tiny scorpion along with the sucker. We’ve decided this should be part of the next Amazing Race for Neland’s TNG group.

Anyway, it was time for dinner, then some swimming. While the kids were in the pool, I went back to our room to get my book. I went back to the elevator, and when the doors opened I found myself staring down a man about 20 years older than me with a cowboy hat, sunglasses (IN the elevator), and a silver bolo tie. He said, “Come on in, little darlin’.” That’s when you know you aren’t in Kansas anymore.

After the swim, we took a walk along the River Walk with the nightlife starting up and the lights on and the rain ended. It’s really a beautiful place, a little Tex-Mex version of Venice. Which makes it fitting that we found a shop to get some gelato and sit back for a few minutes. In a strange twist, it turns out that Allison spent a lot of time worrying that someone would fall into the river, while her mother told her to relax, nothing’s going to happen. I thought it was supposed to be the parent who was overly worried about such things!

Tomorrow is the day that Allison has been waiting for. We’re going to SeaWorld. Right now the local station says it will be 72 and partly cloudy. SeaWorld here has a big water park section with slides and all. Really hoping for a few extra degrees there. That’s all for now. Maybe I’ll have one more report when we get home from the 20+ hours of driving that will be occurring on Friday, before and after we pick up Jodi and her kids again, and on through the night into Saturday morning. For now I must sleep.