Another Week in Review

Another week has past—time to catch up with the Speedy Journal.

When we left off, Speedy had ailing windshield wipers. I took Speedy back into Craig's on Tuesday morning with the expectation of needing a new wiper motor—but I was pleasantly surprised. With some further testing, it was only a bad ground. Corrosion had built up where the motor bolted to the body and the final straw was probably vibration when they were grinding off a stuck bolt the day before. Taking out the bolt and wire brushing the mating surface on the body of the motor and the bolt solved the problem...and there was no charge.

I was back at the refuge by 10am where I found Ellen sitting by herself in the Biology office entering citations. Everyone else was gone to Matagorda Island to survey the shoreline in expectation of oil coming ashore due to the oil spill at the entrance to Galveston Bay a few days earlier. I nearly had a meltdown over the fact that they'd left her behind. Evidently, they could only take six on the boat and Diana didn't realize that the maintenance folks were also taking a boat and had room, but it is evident where we fit in.

The refuge management was totally consumed this week by the oil spill and preparing for it to come ashore on Matagorda. While they have coordination responsibility, any clean-up work will be done by contractors supplied by the offending oil company. Specific training and certification is required to do cleaning up and handling of oiled wildlife, such as sea and shore birds. No one of the refuge has current certification and it starts with a 40 hour hazard materials operations course which means we wouldn't considered.

The rest of the work week was as interesting as Monday for us. We cataloged papers Wednesday and Thursday as well.

Friday started pretty well as we did a bit of birding on the Rail Trail first thing in the morning and saw our first Prothonotary Warbler as well as Yellow-throated Warblers and the ubiquitous Yellow-rumped Warblers. The other notable birds were the Sora and Common Gallinule. The Alligators are starting to bellow as well...a little unnerving as one walks along the swamp.

After our short bird walk, we headed off to San Antonio to meet Tom, Jean and Kathy who were passing through on their return leg. Our first stop, however, was one of the San Antonio Whole Foods markets. We filled up with things we've missed and spent way too much. The Garmin map is not up to date with the highway near the market nad directed us to an exit that no longer exists. It was a bit of fumbling around to find an exit and track back to the store. On leaving we fell into the same trap. The exits from the highway to the one we wanted to be on to get to the campground had been replaced by flyovers and we had to go an exit further and turn around and try again.

We finally got onto the correct road only to run into backed up traffic. San Antonio and its suburbs are growing to fast for its road network. There seemed to be a long series of new subdivision and each had a new set of traffic lights. Once we got past that it was smooth driving to Crane Mill campground on Canyon Lake. It is a Corps of Engineers park and is up to their usual standards. We pulled into a lakeside site right next to Tom and Jean. It was a good reunion and a good dinner was had by all.

On Saturday we went back into San Antonio to see the sights. It started with the Alamo (What else?), which was a bit of a disappointment with crowds and long lines to get into an essentially bare building. I was never quite sure why the Alamo is so important to Texans. After all, it represented a catastrophic defeat.

After the Alamo, we strolled over to the San Antonio Riverwalk, a walkway that loops through a section of downtown along a canal with shops and restaurants along the edge. It is below street level and is cool and calm, even on a busy saturday. It connects to the San Antonio River where there is a pedestrian and cycle path that runs for about 13 miles along the shore.

We emerged from the riverwalk where it connects to the river and walked along the streets to the Mexican Market, where we stopped for lunch at Mi tierra, a famous Mexican cafe and bakery. It was a good lunch, topped off by a stop at the bakery for dessert treats. After lunch we strolled back to the riverwalk, stopping at the Palace of the Governors, a fanciful interpretation of the administrative compound of the early Spanish government. It was another stroll along the river back to Tom's truck and back to camp.

Sunday, we made another foray into San Antonio, this time to visit some of the early Spanish missions, a National Historic Park. There are four missions in the park, plus the Alamo (not part of the park). We visited Mission San Jose, the largest of the three and the site of the Park Service Visitor Center. It is primarily a reconstruction of the Mission grounds and the church from the 1930's. Most of the San Antonio Missions had fallen into disrepair bordering on ruin and the early 20th century brought on a restoration trend. Since then all of the San Antonio Missions have had significant restoration, mostly their churches which have thriving congregations.

The Mission San Jose church has been almost completely reconstructed, all but the exterior decoration. We didn't get to see much of the interior as it was Sunday and the weekly Mariachi Mass was in progress and the church was completely filled. But what we saw was quite impressive.

After the visit to the mission, we headed north, stopping at the other Whole Foods market in San Antonio so that Jean and Kathy could restock. Just like the previous day, the exit from the store to the highway was a bit confusing, so we couldn't find the highway entrance and went a couple of miles out of our way to get back to the highway.

Time for lunch. We were on the way to one of the best BBQ joints in Texas, Two Bros BBQ Market. We ate way too much really good BBQ. Ellen and I had the chopped beef (brisket), some pulled pork, potato salad, a couple of ribs and a fried strawberry pie. We also sampled the coleslaw and peach cobbler (compliments of Tom & Jean). Ellen and Jean shared a craft brew, Philosophizer, from Adlebert's Brewery in Austin. We also got a tour of the pits with the Two Bros pitmaster, formerly a french chef. Since it takes 24-36 hours to smoke their brisket, he spends a lot of time there. It was a great lunch.

It was then off to Gruene.

Gruene, Texas (pronounced Green) is a village on the Guadalupe River. It is a popular spot for local tourists, being the location of Gruene Hall, the oldest dance hall in Texas. It only holds 800 (and would be pretty tightly packed) but virtually everyone has appeared there. There was a free concert on Sunday afternoon (we got there too late) and Jerry Jeff Walker was playing there that night. The town as a collection of shops in restored 1800's buildings including the H. D. Gruene Merchantile and the Gruene General Store.

Needless to say, the town was packed. We found a place to park way in the back of a huge field parking area and walked down to the Gruene Hall, passing an open air stage with a blues-rock band playing at an outdoor bar. The Gruene Hall was quiet (sort of) as their afternoon concert had ended, so we poked around inside. It is definitely old. There were photos all over of previous appearances, lots of country artists, with a big helping of blues, rockabilly, country-rock and folk.

After the hall we wandered down to the river where lots of folks were just hanging out. There was also a bar by the river—highly populated by motorcycles. Lots of bikes in Gruene and passing through. Actually, the hill country seems to be serious motorcycle territory. We saw many on the roads.

We wandered back up to town and through the General Store (heavy on artisanal canned fruits, veggies and jams...and t-shirts), the H.D. Gruene store (antiques) and a series of other small stores, ending up at the Gruene Coffee House (a good brew). We walked through their back yard and were back in the parking field right where Tom's truck was parked.

Monday we left our friends at Cranes Mill and went back into San Antonio to visit a couple of more missions, Mission Espada and Mission San Juan. The restoration of both of these missions is much simpler than that of Mission San Jose. Only the foundations of the compounds are present and the churches are restored. Being a monday, we could peacefully visit the empty mission churches.

The church at Mission Espada is actually the original sacristy, the church is in ruin. The current church is quite small and simple and looks to be very active. The Franciscan Brother lives in the convento attached to the church and has an impressive garden. The early mission had plans for a much larger church that was never finished, the shell of the unfinished church is part of the mission grounds.

The Mission San Juan church is also small, but is much different. Its exterior has been restored to a bright white stucco and is almost minimalist inside.

After our short visit to the missions, it was time to head back to the refuge. Our weekend in san Antonio with friends was almost over.

Photos—Finally!