Posted by
Steve on Saturday, January 06, 2007 12:08:13 PM
Last night, I wrote a post about our trip to Texas. When I got finished, I clicked on spell check and Internet Explorer crashed losing all of the data. I got frustrated and went to bed. This is my second attempt to give my impressions.
On the trip out, we stopped in San Antonio and visited Sea World and The Alamo. We visited Sea World because of my 7 year old granddaughter. Last spring we visited Sea World in San Diego. In comparing the two Sea Worlds, we preferred San Diego. The reason is that San Diego had more things to see and less rides. San Antonio had more rides and less to see. It took us almost two full days to see everything in San Diego and only one in San Antonio. One big difference was the Shamu show. In San Antonio, the show was multimedia and relied on split second timing. In San Diego, the show was more on the animals and was paced for the animals benefit.
The next day we went to see the Alamo. Being from the west, I have not had many chances to see in person where historic events took place. For me, the experience was moving. After spending a few hours at the Alamo, we went to the Riverview mall across the street and saw the IMax movie, "The Alamo". After seeing the Alamo in person, the movie made more of a personal statement. After the movie we went on a boat tour of the river area. The experience was great. If I ever get back to San Antonio, we will be sure to do this again.
After San Antonio, we went up to Killeen and helped my daughter, her husband and new born son get ready to move. We packed up a trailer and left Killeen. We could not leave until 1 pm on Jan. 2. The court house opened at one and closed again at 4:45 pm. That was really strange. We traveled until late and spent the night in Fort Stockton. During the night, it rained. The next morning we had to stop about 120 miles from El Paso because of a 10 vehicle accident with two deaths. The estimate was 1-2 hours before the road would be open. After an hour, a trucker told me it would be another 2-3 hours before I-10 would be open. He was going to take a couple of back roads to get to El Paso. We decided to do likewise. That took us another 3 hours to get to El Paso. We got home around 9 pm.
Texas was almost like being in a strange country. For example, when changing freeways, I am used to changing from one to the other directly. In Texas, we had to travel on surface streets to change freeways. Another strange thing was where they placed their signs to turn. I am used to the signs for a turn to be placed just before the turn. In Texas, they are placed just after the turn. That caused some wrong turns on the trip. Their traffic lights are also horizontal, not vertical. They do have some that are vertical, but very few. That took a little getting used to, but was not a problem.
We are home now and posts will resume on a regular basis. Hope your holiday was good to you.