Texas 2013 - San Antonio and Houston
In 2013, over an extended Labor Day weekend, I drove 3410 miles from California to Texas. I stopped at El Paso for the night. The next morning I drove to Carlsbad Caverns. I spent about 5 hours there and then drove on to San Antonio. You can see more about Carlsbad Caverns in my post on New Mexico. I walked to the Alamo, and saw the shrine that played such a pivotal role in the history of Texas. It was so hot that I decided to take the hop-on-hop-off trolley tour. It goes to several points of interest, and there's one every hour. I got off at the Mission San Jose and at the Mission Concepcion. I then got off at Mercado, which is a center of Mexican food and shopping. I had a delicious lunch at Mi Tierra. After lunch I took the next trolley to the San Fernando Cathedral stop, where I also saw the governor's palace. I then walked to the River Walk and took one of the sightseeing boats along the river. The River Walk is really nice. It is a network of pedestrian-only walkways around the San Antonio river, below the streets of downtown. The walkways are lined with restaurants, shops and the River Center mall. I had another delightful Mexican dinner here.
The next day, I drove to Houston and went to the Johnson Space Center. There are some really interesting exhibits that include the original model of the Goddard Rocket, the actual Mercury Atlas 9 "Faith 7" capsule flown by Gordon Cooper, the Gemini V Spacecraft piloted by Pete Conrad and Gordon Cooper, a Lunar Roving Vehicle Trainer, the Apollo 17 Command Module, the giant Skylab Trainer, and the Apollo-Soyuz Trainer. At the Blast-off theater, I watched a movie of a rocket launch, and experienced the thundering sound of the rocket boosters and the feel of the billowing exhaust. There are two tram tours, the red and the blue. I took both of them. One took me to the Mission Control room. This is the room from where all the Gemini and Apollo, and some of the Space Shuttle missions were commanded. This is also the room where Apollo 11 told the world they had landed on the moon, and where Apollo 13 informed Houston they 'had a problem'. This room is currently used to practice manned missions to Mars. The other tour took me to the Space Vehicle Mock-up facility, that is used for astronaut training. This contains mock-ups of several space shuttles, and every major pressurized module on the International Space Center. Both tours stop at the Rocket Park that contains the Saturn V rockets. I had lunch at the Space Center, and it wasn't very good. If you can, have lunch outside at one of the many restaurants outside the complex. After about 5 hours there, I drove back to San Antonio
The next day,I checked out of my hotel and drove to the two missions that were not included in the hop-on-hop-off tour - Mission Espada and Mission San Juan. I then drove back to El Paso, where I spent the night and drove back to California the next day. All in all, a very long but interesting road trip.
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| Texas 2013 - San Antonio and Houston |
