What a great time it's been.  Met my sister, Mary, at the apartment we rented on VRBO.  Absolutely love it!  The only thing better would be for it to be closer to downtown, but then it would be considerably more expensive.  Randy and Leticia have a garden full of beautiful green edibles, besides a two bedroom, 2 bath upstairs apartment.  With visiting cat, if you like.  Mary and I took the bus to downtown San Antonio, (the stop is right across the street) and in about 20 minutes were on the River Walk.  We spent the day shopping, lunching , shopping took a boat tour.

Boat Tour on the Riverwalk

Went to the Alamo -- not a dramatic mission to visit, but the grounds and the plaza in general are quite beautiful. Second day, we did the same, only we visited other areas of the river walk.

Ray and Mary on the porch.

Ray joined us Wednesday afternoon after 7 days of driving our car to San Antonio.  For dinner, Ray bar-b-qued a pork tenderloin on our host's grill, using greens from his garden as our sides.  Delightful dinner!  Thursday, Mary had to leave, then Ray and I went downtown to have dinner and walk the parts of the Riverwalk he hadn't seen.  To be honest, aside from the Riverwalk, there's not much to downtown San Antonio.  But the Riverwalk is truly exceptional.

After that, we visited the Botanical Park, not far from where we were staying.  Dinner at Silo, just a few blocks away from the apartment,  capped the day.

On Saturday, because it was supposed to be in the low 90's (and it was), we did another volkswalk on the Museum Reach of the Riverwalk, the northern end.  The Riverwalk terminates at the Pearl Brewery complex [not a brewery at all, but a renovated, gentrified shopping/eating area.  Our lunches at the Boiler Room (we went there with Mary on Thursday, too) were really unique.  My burger had foie gras peanut butter on it, Ray's had tomato jam.]

 The walk, however went on to Brackenridge Park, then looped back to the Riverwalk.  Some of the walk in the park was under contruction, so we turned around and walked all the way downtown on the Riverwalk.  Really beautiful.  Then, we took a river taxi back.  Hah!

River taxi

The Grotto

Below Pearl Brewery, end of Riverwalk

The last thing we did was visit some of the missions in the valley.  Well, only one because it was hotter than blue blazes and they're all out in the open with absolutely no shade.  So Mission San Jose, the one that is the National Historic Site headquarters was our pick.  Here's the church, which is still in use.

On Friday, we actually did a volkswalk.  We went north of San Antonio to the hill country and the Friedrich Wilderness Park.  Lots of limestone and dust!  Plenty of trees, thank heaven, since it was pretty warm by the time we finished.  We lunched at Rudy's BBQ.  Supposed to be one of the best in the area (it's really kind of a chain) and we were not impressed.  

Texas hill country

So that's all catching up.  Today, we've driven to Ardmore, Oklahoma.  Tomorrow morning, while it's still cool (it's 96 degrees right now), we'll volkswalk the Chickasaw National Wildlife Area, then move on to Fort Smith, Arkansas.  Hopefully, we'll overnight in Hot Springs.