At first blush, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to be “going back to Houston,” like the old pop song advocates. This massive city struck me as cold and impersonal, and sadly lacking in human energy. Houston, we have a problem.
But that was before I found the Red Cat Jazz Cafe.
Read on . . .
San Antonio, Texas is, simply put, one heck of a great vacation destination. It is family-friendly, it is easy to navigate, it offers many activities and adventures, and there are no crowds right after Labor Day. But even when there are crowds (like on the Labor Day weekend), San Antonio is a must-see. And, a caution here, a couple of days just won’t be enough time.
Read on . . .
(An early morning view of the beautiful Mission San Jose in San Antonio’s Missions National Park.)
Thank you, Hurricane Gustav. We are sitting high and dry in one of the loveliest cities in North America, San Antonio. We are supposed to be in New Orleans. But thanks to a little convincing by Gustav and American officials, we changed our plans.
On the day we were set to arrive in NOLA, evacuation orders forced nearly two million folks to leave the southern seaboard. We had planned a holiday riding the rails, the Amtrak rails, but the trains were needed to take people out of New Orleans, so Amtrak cancelled our reservations.
We were in Houston (another area slated to be hit by Gustav) so we had no choice but to rent a car and head north to San Antonio. In fact, on our way, we passed a convoy of 2 dozen buses that were heading south on a rescue mission. Later, on TV, we watched as an endless line of buses, filled with those folks escaping the storm, headed away to safer zones like Dallas and Houston.
Now we are watching as the eye of Gustav makes landfall — the good news, maybe, for New Orleans, is that the eye will be passing farther to the west than expected.
But in the meantime, we are in San Antonio, where we have rented a comfortable house, we have walked the famous Riverwalk, we have ridden the canal boats, we have paid homage to the Alamo, and we have made an early morning trek to the old Spanish missions. What a joy!
Read on . . .
There’s “adventurous” travel and then there is “dangerous” travel. Since neither my husband nor I are members of the CIA, nor are we navy seals, we have placed limitations on our travel experiences. Those limitations recently affected one of our travel decisions: an end-of-summer trip to Belize.
Having reviewed a recent Canadian foreign affairs travel report, we have decided that Belize is not the place for us – at least not this year.
Read on . . .
Who are these people? We didn’t know them either, that is until we attended their wedding, uninvited. But you haven’t lived until you’ve crashed a Mexican wedding.
My husband and I don’t normally go uninvited to the wedding of strangers, but cheap happy hour drinks, great Mexican food, and authentic Mariachi music were too attractive to resist. An evening out at a local Mexican restaurant sounded like a great idea. We weren’t planning on the wedding.
Read on . . .
Looking for drugs? Do you need a tooth fixed? Or maybe you just have a yen for a darn good taco.
A visit to Brownsville, Texas is great but you must spend at least one day in a foreign country when in the area. And that’s so easy to do, because Mexico is just a short drive, or walk, away.
You can choose from a variety of entry points (International Bridges), but double your fun with a drive up Hwy 281, the “Old Military” highway, and hang a left at Progresso.
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Okay, call me a traitor, call me a fool, call me any name you like but I had to take the chance. I made a decision, before a recent trip to southern Texas and New Orleans, to leave my heavy Olympus Evolt E-300 DSLR at home. I replaced it with a sleek little 12-megapixel Fuji FinePix F50 compact digital camera.
My husband looked at me askance as he repeatedly asked me if I still wanted to take my DSLR camera. I told him, firmly, “No.” That I would take my chances. And that I would live with my decision. Only time would tell if I had made a terrible mistake . . .
“Oh, look a snake!”
The urgency in my husband’s voice was alarming. We had just been warned by a local Texan to watch out for snakes inhabiting the bushes. And sure enough, in one of the older, more deserted, most appealing graveyards, just outside of Brownsville, along Highway 281, a snake crossed our paths.
Read on. . .
There is hell on earth, and it’s called, “deep sea fishing.” What was I thinking, or rather, what was my husband thinking when he agreed to a 5-hour deep sea fishing adventure?
We took our first deep sea fishing trip just off the coast of South Padre Island in Texas. To me, it was an adventure; to my husband, it was an unending journey into the depths of hell.
Read on . . .
In the army, you never know who you’ll be bunking with. Except Simon Vega had a fairly good idea that the dark-haired handsome guy from Tupelo, Mississippi, was special. Back in 1958, Vega shared army duty with none other than the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Vega remembers fondly his days with a young Elvis. But remembering his former army buddy wasn’t enough for Vega; only a museum would do. But what a place to put a museum!
Read on. . . (more…)
