We reached the Guenther House after about 3+ miles of bike riding. The Guenther House was home to the C. H. Guenther who started Pioneer Mills back in 1860 and is still in operation today.
The house is right behind the mill and serves as a restaurant, bakery, gift shop and museum today...
...and is located right along the Riverwalk...
...and the surrounding grounds.
Chuck, Bonnie and Ken had the Pioneer Platter which consisted of eggs, bacon, sausage, breakfast potatoes and biscuits and gravy and I had the Sweet Cream Waffle.
It was all very good and their house coffee was exceptional. I meant to give Bonnie a bite of my sweet cream waffle to try but I was so busy enjoying the coffee and the waffle that I forgot. Oops! Sorry, Bonnie!
Their bakery had a lot of delicious items like huge sticky buns and cinnamon rolls but we were a little full to try any of those. :)
After getting our picture taken with the waitress...
...we walked inside the Guenther House to look around. Like the Menger Hotel, it is a beautiful old house that has been carefully preserved. This parlor room had a model wearing royal dress of the Queen of the San Antonio Fiesta parade that one of the Guenther ladies had worn from many years ago.
I bought some of their house coffee in the gift shop and on the way out, Chuck stopped and got his picture taken with David Robinson, a former NBA basketball player with the San Antonio Spurs.
Chuck had noticed him when we walked inside and asked one of the guys working at the Guenther House if that is who he was. He talked about what a super nice guy Mr. Robinson is and how he does so much for the community. He's just a little bit taller than Chuck. :)
After we left the Guenther house, we got on our bikes and rode through the King William District of San Antonio...
which was filled with beautiful old houses.
We got back on the Riverwalk and rode closer into town.
We rode as far as we could on the Riverwalk which was right at downtown San Antonio and then turned around and headed back.
We went by the Pioneer Mills again.
...and this is how it looks today.
It's encouraging to see this new growth and development. San Antonio is such a beautiful city with its old historical buildings and so many appear to be abandoned downtown. We noticed that one of the big old buildings downtown next to the Menger Hotel is being converted to a big mall.
We rode on a little further to Mission Concepion which was about 1/2 mile off the Riverwalk. What a beautiful place!
Mission Concepion is the best preserved of all of the missions and the only one of the five missions that is the original stucture that is still standing.
A lot of the rooms inside had some of the original artwork on the walls.
We did not do a guided tour of Mission Concepcion so I don't have a lot of information to give you. I'll let the pictures give you a tour. Beautiful!
The inside of the sanctuary was beautiful too.
On the wall of this side room at the back of the sanctuary, there was this beautifully preserved painting of Jesus on the cross.
If we had more time, we would have loved to have done a guided tour of this mission as well but we had to head back to start getting ready for leaving San Antonio tomorrow.
When we got back, we went to H-E-B to get stocked up on groceries for the next week and then Chuck began cleaning all the sticky mulberries off the roof and slide-outs. It seemed like there were hundreds of them up there.
What a fun time we had in San Antonio! What's next? BIG BEND!
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