Archiving throughout Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas: Mom and Madison Visit us in Texas July 9

Mom and Madison made another trip to our part of the world and we did a whirlwind visit of three major cities in Texas: Houston, Austin and San Antonio. Here we are in front of the Texas History Museum in Austin.

We started our Texas adventure in Houston and within hours of the two of them landing at George Bush International, we were at the Houston Visitor's Center, preparing to take a three hour van tour of the city. Here, we are in front of a statue of Sam Houston.

Here we are with Keith, retired history professor and long-time resident of Houston. He did a great job sharing his knowledge of the city and taking us through many of Houston's diverse neighborhoods. Below is the infamous beer can house. Yes, made from the pieces of thousands of beer cans.

Here are are tooling around Houston in Keith's van. Madison's phone is truly an extension of her arm!

At the end of our first day, we found a great barbecue restaurant (recommended by one of the parking garage attendants) and we ate GOOD!

Our second day in Houston took us on a trip through the Houston Channel. This was not a "scenic" boat ride, but rather an historic and informative trip, through the shipyard and ports, used by global freight companies. We also passed the location of the San Jacinto Battle, the one post-Alamo that gave Texas its independence from Mexico. We learned a lot about that process during our time here.

After the boat tour, we went downtown and ate lunch at Irma's a local fave for Mexican food. It was delicious - especially the guacamole.

We then spent a delightful afternoon at the Bayou Bend historical home of the late Houston philanthropist and civic leader, Ima Hogg, daughter of the 20th Gov. of Texas. She was a dedicated citizen and donated this property to be used as a museum upon her death.

Houston we have a......now we are touring the NASA Space Center. We had high expectations for this heavily-promoted facility, and were disappointed. It was an antiquated piece of American history that should have dazzled. Most museums today are more entertaining and visually-appealing than this stop on our Texas sweep and we were shocked at the lack of imagination and relevance here. Although we are still glad we saw it, we would not recommend it, nor will we return. Here we are taking off on the much-hyped tram tour, which did a good job of showing us many back parking lots on the facility....too bad we had to wait so long outside in the heat for it.

Seeing the original Mission Control was cool. There was a short video that relayed some of the historic moments in this room, now on the register of historic places. There was also a Q & A session after the video where we learned even more about the room.

Our first meal in Austin, along 6th Street, their area concentrated with bars and restaurants.

We were in Austin two nights and went to the Congress Ave Bridge both nights to watch the bats come out at dusk. The first night we watched from a tour boat, which was totally fun and cool. This bridge, with crevices underneath that are perfect for roosting, holds as many as 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats every summer. It has become a tourist attraction and the tourists are as much of a spectacle as the bats!

We learned a lot about the city and its skyline during our boat ride on the Lade Bird Johnson Lake - a section of the Colorado River. The Congress Ave Bridge can be seen in the photo above.

People line up along the bride every night awaiting the bats to come out! Our tour guide, Danielle, can be seen in the photo below - between me and Oliver's heads.

Here they come! Thousands of them moving rapidly from underneath the bridge, out into the night sky. These bats will collectively consume between 10-20,000 pounds of insects each night. This is a good thing for humans.

The boat came back to the dock at night, with the lights of the city looking pretty in the background.

We toured the State Capital the next day. The temps were really starting to heat-up at this point in the trip, so we had to be careful not to walk around outside for too long. Today, we hit triple-digits.

The Texas State Capital was full of interesting paintings, sculptures photos, and history. Not surprisingly, it honors, in many ways, some of the individuals who helped Texas gain independence: Jim Bowie, David Crockett, William Travis, Sam Houston, Sam Austin. There are also other famous Texas seen around the Capital such as both George Bushes and Lyndon B Johnson.

We did walk from the Capital to the Texas Museum. It was a lovely walk, just a little warm....

Here are some scenes from the Texas State History Museum. We really enjoyed touring this place: saw a couple of movies and videos, and learned a lot more about the interesting and challenging past that lead to Texas becoming the 28th State in 1845. This was less than ten years after it became Independent from Mexico, after the Battle of San Jacinto (outside of Houston) in 1836.

We had dinner on our second night in Austin with one of Madison's friends from Syracuse U. Mike lives outside of Austin and joined us for dinner, then took Madison out for a night along 6th Street. Madison said it was a crazy scene - lots of live music and people all over the place. They close it to traffic on weekend nights.

On Sunday morning, mom and I visited the Lyndon B Johnson Presidential Library on the Campus of hte University of Texas, very much a part of the city of Austin. It was another interesting historical place where we enjoyed looking at photos, videos, and hearing phone conversations that they made available between the President and various other people of influene during his administration. He was a larger than life President and is a completely entertaining person to watch and listen to.

He had a pretty good view of the city and the campus from his office here. He spent his post-presidential years working from this building.

Below we enjoyed a final, delicious Mexican meal in Austin before making the short drive to San Antonio.

Of course, the first place we visited upon arriving to San Antonio was the Alamo. It was a short walk from our hotel and was, of course, loaded with information on the battle that took place here. Nearly 200 people died attempting to defend the fort and mission from the much larger and well-equipped Mexican army, lead by Santa Anna. It was basically a massacre that lead to outrage within the area, and ultimately lead to the victory at San Jacinto less than two months later.

The Alamo is a beautiful building with very nice green grounds around it. The entire complex sits within urban San Antonio, very close to the city's River Walk, making it easy to visit.

Above, Madison and Oliver are entering the Alamo, Below, Madison stands in front of the various flags of the Texas Revolution, the current State Flag and, of course, the National Flag.

More images from the Alamo.

Above is Madison in front of the David Crockett Hotel, across the street from the Alamo. Below we are trying to figure out where we are along San Antonio's famous River Walk. Of our three nights in San Antonio, we ate two dinners along the River Walk.

We had a 24 hour ticket on a double decker tour bus that drove a 60-minute route around the city. We took full advantage of this ride and saw a lot of the city from the bus. Here are some images from our various rides.

One stop we made was at the El Mercado (or, Market Square) has the look and feel of an old Spanish Village. Here we enjoyed a lovely Mexican lunch outdoors.

More city scapes from San Antonio.

This is the San Fernando Cathedral, the oldest operating religious community in Texas.

This is where the remains of the heroes of the Alamo are kept. Although all of the bodies of the Texas soldiers were burned after the battle, their ashes landed at this historic cathedral.

This is the Spanish Governor's Palace, another historic building along our bus route. It was the home of various military leaders from 1722-early 1800s.

The Spanish Governor's Palace had a nicely kept, fenced in garden in the backyard.

We landed at LaVillita during a shower along our bus route. This was one of the first neighborhoods in San Antonio, and now utilizes some of those original homes as an arts community with restaurants and shops. We did both during our time here.