'member the Alamo

After spending the first day in San Antonio at Six Flags Fiesta Texas- I had to... couldn't miss Fright Fest, and I had to find somewhere to scream after driving 8 hours straight through the night- I went downtown to see the Alamo and visit the Riverwalk.  **Ok, so as a side story, I stopped in Rivercenter Mall for some caffeine and wanted a pumpkin spice cappuccino.  They do vanilla, why not pumpkin spice?  Well, the flavor wasn't the issue.  The guy asked me if I knew what a cappuccino was. Huh??  I actually had to look at the front door to make sure  walked into the Starbucks and not another store by mistake.  I ended up getting what I ordered, but not without a very confused looked on my face, I'm sure.**

Anyways, everything's bigger in Texas? Not the Alamo.  It is so much smaller than I expected.  No wonder there are so many signs so people can find it, hiding in the city.  It was still cool to see-- no pics inside, but I got a few outside.

A lot of the buildings were of limestone or sand color, so it made the city look old in a nice way.  In a Texan way :)

The Riverwalk is really pretty.  I didn't stop in any of the shops or bars and restaurants because I had a date with a million bats in Austin and had to be there by sundown, but I walked a little bit of it and it was much prettier than I had imagined.  Very relaxing to walk along; great atmosphere.  Plenty of arched bridges to walk under and boats floating along side of you.

Ok, so I thought I was going to miss these bats I wanted so badly to see, but (little to my knowledge) I could have been 30 minutes late and still have been able to catch sight of 'em. 

Austin holds the largest bat colony in North America and they come out from under the Congress Street Bridge every evening at sundown between April and October.  Sure enough, shortly after the sun set, 1.5 million sparrow-sized Mexican free tailed bats began flying from under the bridge in a constant, steady stream.  It looked just like a fluttery cloud overhead, and couple low-fliers would get pretty close to you.  I tried to lighten the picture up some so you could see the bats a little bit... it was just so dark.  Out of 11 pics, I was hoping to get at least one!

 









But just to be standing under such a sight... it was amazing.  These bats continued to flow out over the river for about 40 minutes straight!  Totally worth the drive. 

 

Next drive... way long.  West towards New Mexico.   A lot of mountains, a lot of sun.  I think I got sunburn on just my left side from the trip.  Stopped in El Paso, TX, but it's only good for a stop- plenty of stores, and it was the first civilization I had been in for almost 600 miles, but I didn't do anything here.  Too much construction and traffic.