HILL COUNTRY 2025
  
 

Day 04

November 13

 
 
  Today I have set aside to visit the Alamo in San Antonio. I've been in area several times but have never stopped. I hit the WhatABurger to see what they have for breakfast.
 
  They have some pretty tasty biscuits with the required hen fruit and pig meat in between. They even throw on some cheese to top it off.
 
  With breakfast taken ample care of, I head for the slab since it is a straight shot down I10 to within a mile or two of my destination.
 
  I am making really good time as traffic is really sparse. I have rerouted my return to Natchez via I10 and then 165 with a bypass around of San Antonio. But if traffic is this light I may change my route for tomorrow just to stay on I10 through the city.
 
  But as I10 nears I35 there is major construction going on which creates a real train wreck. There are several two lane into one lane merges and it seems that drivers seldom can cope with it. I am only 4 miles from my desired exit but it takes me as long to cover those 4 miles as it did to get the 70 miles to this point.
   
  And to add insult to injury, when I do finally get to my exit, the construction has closed it. I go on by and manage to find another exit that is open and tour downtown San Antonio trying to get to the Alamo.  
 
  I finally find a parking lot some distance from the Alamo and for that I am thankful. But they sure think a lot of their parking spaces as it is outrageously expensive. But some days you just have to suck it up and pay the fiddler if you want to dance.
 
  It's a bit of a walk but I finally arrive at the site. I am dumbstruck as to how close the city sprawl has encroached on the historical site. The only two remaining buildings are the church itself and what they call the 'long barracks'.
 
  They have reconstructed the 'mission' gate as they think it was back in 1836.
 
  They have a nice statue of James Bowie near the gate. It was sad fact that before the final battle he became ill and was bedridden up to the time the Mexican soldiers bayoneted him to death.
 
  After all the hassle of the traffic jam and parking expense, the camera I have with me decides to flake out. I am tired and a bit frustrated so I find a quiet shaded bench to sit down and think a minute. Do I just call it day and forget it or do I take the long walk back to the bike and retrieve my backup camera? At this point I determine I am going to get some different cameras as the Olympus units I have been using are dropping like flies at the most inappropriate times. I decide that I am already here, I've already paid the money and I've got nothing waiting for me but a motel room. So I hike up my britches and go fetch the other camera.
 
  This picture of the memorial to those who sacrificed their lives gives you a really good idea of just how the city had grown up around the site.
 
  This is a statue of one of the Tennesseans who perished in the battle - Davy Crockett. There were 32 Tennesseans who died that day defending what they believed in. That was more than from any other state among the 200 men who perished inside the fort.
 
  There are some diagrams that sort of give you a sense of just how big the fortress was.
 
  And there are some interesting structures off to the side of the church but I don't know if this was original or reconstructed.
 
  They request that no pictures be taken inside the church so I honor that. When I come back out I see this massive old tree and wonder if it was there during the battle.
 
  In the long barracks, the oldest structure in Texas the site notes, is a sample hospital set up.
 
  Medicine was pretty primitive and simple back in those days.
 
 

There is a modest memorial for two ladies, Adina De Zavala and Calara Driscoll, who saved the Alamo from more encroachment. The story is -

By the late 1880s, the historic San Antonio missions were falling into disrepair and becoming subject to vandals. Adina De Zavala's initial efforts were towards saving these historical structures, in particular the Mission San Antonio de Valero otherwise known as the Alamo. The public entrance known as the Alamo's mission chapel was already owned by the State of Texas, which had purchased the building from the Roman Catholic Church in 1883 and had given custody to the City of San Antonio. The city had made no improvements to the chapel structure, and ownership did not include the Long Barrack, which was owned by wholesale grocer Gustav Schmeltzer. Italian-born sculptor Pompeo Luigi Coppini of the Alamo Cenotaph fame, related that Adina, accompanied by Pompeo's wife Elizabeth di Barbieri Coppini, "went out every day with our horse and buggy, calling on all the merchants of the town for some contributions of bricks, lumber, cedar posts, or wire to repair fences. These articles, in lieu of money, were to be used in repairing all the missions, the chapel of the Alamo included." Adina and her group convinced Gustav Schmeltzer to give the historical society first option to buy the the Long Barrack (or convento) structure if it went up for sale. She was notified in 1903 that the owners were considering a sale to a hotel syndicate. De Zavala enlisted heiress and historical preservationist Clara Driscoll to put up financial backing for the purchase. On January 26, 1905, Governor S.W.T Lanham signed legislation for state funding to preserve the Alamo property. The state reimbursed Clara Driscoll and, on October 4, 1905, the governor formally conveyed the Alamo property, including the convento and the mission church, to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

 
  The long barrack suffered from having it's top story removed before the ladies could gain control of it.
 
  Fortunately the Alamo has a website that allows you to do 'side by side ' - 1836 versus today which really helps me get a better idea of how things really looked. You can rotate around 360 degrees. This is the view looking at the mission itself.
   
  This is looking at the long barracks.  
   
  This is looking out from the mission.  
   
  This is looking out in a different direction.  
   
  Those visuals helped me get a better understanding of the how the fort looked at the time of the battle. There is a movement to restore more of the area back like it was instead of having all the sprawl that is there now. I hope that it is robustly successful in its efforts.  
 
  I make the long walk back to the bike and head straight for I10 hoping that north bound I will not encounter any of the mess I did coming southbound.
 
  Since I have accomplished the two things I'd hoped to do on this trip - ride the Twisted Sisters and visit the Alamo, I figure a little celebration is in order. Across the street and up a bit of hill is the 5D Steakhouse.
 
  That certainly works for me so I take advantage of it. Nothing like a good plate of roughage to get started with.
   
  And the piece of dead cow and old fashioned baked potato ain't bad either!  
 
  After finishing that delightful repast, I put SweetTreat to bed properly.
 
  I have rearranged my route for tomorrow to Natchez so that I don't get caught out after dark in the woods. With all things in proper order, I drift off into a peaceful slumber.