A Month in San Antonio

Well, I know it's been about a month since I posted on our blog so I thought it was about time to summarize what all we have been doing and get caught up.  We have spent the past month at Travelers World in San Antonio, Texas, where we have enjoyed a relaxing time with new friends and old friends.

Chuck enjoyed playing several rounds of golf the first couple of weeks we were in San Antonio.  He played in a couple of the park's weekly golf scrambles as well as a couple of new courses he had not played at previously:  SilverHorn Golf Club and The Quarry Golf Club.

At the SilverHorn, he saw a lot of huge deer with Texas-size antlers.

Unfortunately, his phone does not have a Texas-size lens to zoom them up with.

The Quarry was a beautiful course also built along the edges of an old rock quarry.

While Chuck was out on some of his golf outings, I would go out on some adventures too like going shopping and out to lunch with Gloria, Joslyn and Suzanne at IHOP and eating yummy Swedish crepes with ligonberries (like what I had at Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant Sisters Bay, Wisconsin).

Or going to Mi Tierra in the Historic Market Square for lunch with Gloria and Betty.  Betty is a native San Antonian and she knows the good restaurants and Mi Tierra is one of them! The restaurant is so colorful and the food was delicious!

Mi Tierra is located in the Historic Market Square in downtown San Antonio.  After lunch, we walked down to one of the inside malls so I could look for the hand-made Guatamalan backpack/purse that I had almost bought when we were here back in April with Ken and Bonnie.  I found it and bought it today!  After a little more shopping and looking around, we stopped off at the bakery inside Mi Tierra to get a couple of pastries to take home.

Way too much to choose from and it all looked delicious!

When we walked back to Betty's car, we found that someone had backed into her bumper and had not left a note or anything.  Well, that was not a very nice thing to do!

Before we got back to the campground, Betty drove by her son and daughter-in-law's house to check to see if there were any packages on the front porch since they were away on their honeymoon.  Because their driveway was kind of steep, I told Betty to just let me out and I would run up there and pick up any packages.

A couple of weeks later after her son and daughter-in-law had gotten back from their honeymoon, they mentioned that they thought someone had stolen one of the packages that had been left on their front porch.  When they told Betty and Doug (her husband) about the incident, they were like "I can't believe someone would steal your packages like that."  When their son showed them the picture of the "thief", there I was on their security camera picking up their package.  Oops!  Betty had forgotten about our having stopped by their house that day.  :)

We also made a couple of trips into downtown San Antonio on the bus.  One day, Terry, Gloria, Tim and Chuck and I went downtown and had lunch at Pat'OBriens and then walked around the Riverwalk and near the Alamo.

New Orlean's Trio:  Red Beans & Rice, Jumbalaya, and Chicken Gumbo.
Yum!!!

On our 2nd outing to downtown San Antonio, several of us Travelers World veterans (Terry & Gloria, Warren & Joslyn, Charlie & Suzanne, and Chuck & me) took the newbies (Dana and Keri) to the restaurant at the top of the Tower of the Americas.

The lower the sun sets,
the taller the Tower gets.

L to R: Suzanne, Charlie, Gloria, Terry, Joslyn, Warren,
Chuck, me, Keri & Dana)

Yummmm.  Prime rib sliders!  

Sunset view from the top of the Tower.

View from the glass elevator:
Full moon over San Antonio.

After the sun sets in Hemisphere Park.

In the middle of our stay in San Antonio, we flew back to Nashville because Chuck had to have a spot removed on his upper arm that had shown to be a squamous cell carcinoma from a pathology test taken in December.  Of course, this gave us another chance to be with my mom for a couple of days and she, of course, kept us well fed.  :)  On the morning we were scheduled to fly back, I received a text message saying our flight had been canceled because of the snow and ice that had hit Nashville earlier that morning.  So, we got to spend one more day with my mom and flew back to San Antonio that night.  And the really good news is that the 2nd pathology test came back clear and no more squamous.  He just has to go to the dermatologist twice a year now and that's fine with us!

Two days after we got back to San Antonio, I received the following picture text from my mom...

...and Chuck at about the same time got the following picture text from his uncle Donald:

We got out of Nashville just in time!  I did rub it in just a little bit and texted them back with a picture of the beautiful weather we were having in San Antonio.  :)

We ate real good while we were in San Antonio and my jeans are now telling me how well I ate.  :)  We ate at Lou's Pizza twice where their largest pizza is 52"!  We didn't order one that big but the pizza we did eat was delicious!  We had a couple of very good breakfasts with Terry and Gloria and Joslyn at Cracker Barrel and had the nicest waitress, Jessica, both times.  

And speaking of breakfast, I asked Warren to take me to the nearby Mexican bakery early Tuesday morning so we could get some of their delicious, sugary-sweet fritters and twists.  I bought 5 huge fritters and 4 twists.  Guess how much they cost?  $4.50!  I couldn't believe it!

We also went to a couple of the pot-lucks and social hours where there is always lots of good food and great fun and laughter and fellowship.  

Except for the Saturday night steak night at the rec hall, Chuck only grilled for us one time!  

Our neighbors in the Airstream next door, Patric and Kimberly, are both fantastic artists.  Patrick is a painter and Kimberly a photographer.  We're looking forward to maybe seeing them along some of our travels at the Plein Art Festivals they participate in.  

With all that good food, we tried to get a little exercise by walking on the treadmills in the exercise room (and I read a couple of good books while walking).  They also had a Yoga class on Mondays that Karen led.  I had never done Yoga and Karen was so good at showing us how to breathe and do the different poses.  I really enjoyed it!

Last Saturday, we had fun playing in the park's Wii Bowling Tournament.  Terry, Gloria, Chuck and I were on one team called the Ten Pins.  

Chuck was unable to play any more golf after his surgery for the remainder of the time we were in San Antonio, but we did enjoy more of the park activities.  Nancy invited us to the park's Thursday night Texas Hold'em game and we had so much fun learning the game and playing with Harold, Donna, Mary C., Sharon, Dixie, and Nancy.  I worked some jigsaw puzzles with Gloria and Mary B. but they were much better than me at putting those 1,000 and 2000 piece puzzles together.  And I loved hearing Mary B.'s stories about her and her husband Skip's 38 years in Alaska!

On Monday, Terry & Gloria and Warren & Joslyn fixed a delicious dinner of grilled pork loin, chicken, fresh vegetables, and mashed potato salad which gave us another terrific evening with Peter & Linda, Lorne & Betty, Dana & Keri, and Suzanne & Charlie.

And then on Wednesday evening, Terry & Gloria, Warren & Joslyn, Doug & Betty, Charlie & Suzanne, and Chuck and I went to dinner at Capparelli's.  We all had delicious Italian food and several of us had enough leftovers for a second night.

On this, our last morning, Warren and Joslyn fixed a delicious breakfast of breakfast tacos and then we said our good-byes to everyone.  We have made so many, many friends here at Travelers World. 

We are so very, very blessed.  We will miss "all y'all" so much and look forward to seeing you again next year!!!  

Back to San Antonio Again

After a very fun and busy Christmas in Atlanta, we began heading west to San Antonio on Monday, December 28.  We knew we were going to be heading through the storm system that had brought deadly tornados to the Dallas area a few days before.  After monitoring the weather closely, we decided our best bet was just to head out as we planned on I-85 to I-65 to I-10.

I kept an eye on the weather radar while Chuck was driving and we hit our first rain just south of Montgomery.  Fortunately, we were crossing through the narrowest part of the storm.  We did hit some heavy rain...

...but by continuing to carefully drive through it...

...we were totally out of the rain and the storms by the time we reached Mobile.  We continued heading west on I-10 across Mississippi and into Louisiana.  The only major traffic we ran into was crossing the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge.

Baton Rouge

We hoped to get as far as Frog City RV Park where we had met Ken and Bonnie last April in Duson, Louisiana.  The sun was bright and almost blinding as it set in the western sky but that's a whole lot better than driving through storms and rain.

We reached Frog City RV Park around 5:45 and actually got the same site we had last April.  Unfortunately, Ken and Bonnie weren't next to us this time.  :(

After a good night's rest, we headed for San Antonio a little after 7 am.  As we were traveling west on I-10, we noticed this unusual cloud formation.

It looked like a big hole in the clouds with a whirlwind forming below it to suck up what was traveling below.  Fortunately, it just looked that way and was NOT the beginnings of a tornado.

 and by 2:30 we were pulling into Traveler's World RV Park in San Antonio, our home for the next month.

Warren and Joslyn greeted us as soon as we were checking in and we soon saw Terry and Gloria and Tim and Nancy.  After visiting for a while, we all went to dinner at Mad Mack's and had some delicious hamburgers.  Chuck played golf in the Wednesday Scramble and Wednesday evening we rested and watched some bowl games.

On New Year's Eve, we watched more bowl games and then headed to the hall for another very fun New Year's Eve party that evening.

Happy New Year 2016!!

We have had a nice 2016 so far!  Chuck has played golf several times and we've gone to the driving range once where I hit a few balls too.  We've enjoyed playing cards some evenings and even played Texas Hold'em for the first time last Thursday at the park.  The weather has been better this year but it is supposed to be a little cooler this next week.  We have also enjoyed one of the pot-luck dinners and hope to enjoy a couple more of those.  I have tried yoga a couple of mornings and am quickly learning I'm not near as flexible as I used to be (not that I ever was).  I enjoy the yoga but I've got a lot to learn.  I've even learned how to do a little more crocheting.

Normally, we are on the move at least every couple of weeks so it's been kind of nice to stay put for a month.  And we have enjoyed getting to spend time with our friends here at Traveler's World.