San Antonio is so much nicer than El Paso!

Well this last weekend we went to see Owen. We left last thursday night and I drove all night. That is what I do... It is so much easier than trying to drive any distance that is going to take more than 3 hours with 3 children, all under 5, wide awake! So when I make a long roadtrip... it is generally just me and the long haul truckers on the road.

I digress.... I dont have any great pictures of the trip.My camera battery is dead. It will not hold a charge at all. So no pictures. (There will be pictures later though... Owen had a crappy point and shoot!) Which is a bummer cause I saw some really neat things on the road. There was a truck pulling an antique firetruck on a trailer. There was and armadillo. (I think it was dead...) There was the town of Ozona. The aforementioned town would not have been at all remarkable.... except that some funny things happened while I was there. First of all I stopped at the local gas station because, well I needed gas... and the two youngest children needed new diapers, and Alexander had to pee. So I stopped for gas.... And when I got out of the bathroom (yes we used the bathroom first.. you dont tell a 4 year old that they have to wait just cause you want to be a customer before you use the facilities!) the gas station was oddly busy. Yes it was first thing in the morning so I suppose that some of the people there could have theoretically needed gas.... but I did say oddly busy... and the reason I said that is because only 2 of the customers (other than me of course) was pumping gas. They were all watching me pump gas. Seriously.

Now I know that I do not look particularly mainstream... and I am sure that for the people in that town the sight of a young-ish girl with purple hair, all black clothes, and a pair of really tall boots was a strange sight.... but seriously!? Someone had to have called all their friends and said "come down to the gas station! You are never gonna believe this lady that is pumping gas.... and she wanted to pay before she pumped!!!" (I am from cali... you always pay before you pump there cause if you are a gas station owner and you dont make them pay first... you are gonna be giving out alot of free gas!) Now I suppose that you could argue that perhaps the local townspeople always hang out at the local gas station.... but 1. I am pretty sure that I saw a flash go off... like someone took my picture... and 2. as I pulled out of the gas station.... so did the masses. Seriously. I looked back when I got to THE stoplight and there was nobody at the gas station!!!!!

Now that in and of itself was strange to me... but then I tried to listen to the radio.... There were 4 stations.

1. Retro Country
2. Contemporary Country
3. Christian
4. Oldies

Ok. This is a rural area. I get that. But seriously!? And the oldies station wasn't even playing the good oldies! The only song they played that I recognised for the entire 2 hours I was listening to Ozona's oldies station was "Mr Postman" you know that song that goes "wait mr postman! Look and see! Is there a letter in your bag for me?" Plus even the commercials were weird. They were all about "go eagles!" or "Go Lady Eagles!" with a very small blip at the end that would say something like " brought to you buy Jacks Barn Insurance! Dont forget that if you have a metal roof you will get a discount on your insurance!" I am sure that that is completely normal for rural areas... but I am a city girl... A big city girl.

Well that is enough about Ozona! It took me longer to write about it than it did to pass through it! I have to admitt though... Ozona was beautiful. Green and fresh smelling. And the people that I did talk to were very friendly!

So I continued on to San Antonio. I took the I10 the whole way. San Antonio is more like Hollywood than anywhere else I have been in the state of Texas, with one major exception. I felt safe walking around in downtown San Antonio at night.

After all that driving I was tired. You don't believe me? This is what I looked like a couple of hours after we got there:

Yep. I looked bad. I know. It is ok.

So since I was exhausted and the children were not... we took them to Mc Donalds. This was the only Mc Donalds that I have ever been to that actually closed their playplace at exactly 9pm!!!! (I had already been there for a while by now... I am just cutting out the boring parts... like about how Alexander gave himself a concussion at the Commissary) We were still hungry though... so we ate. Then, as we were leaving Alexander decided to climb the wall.... yep. Just hours after knocking himself unconscious at the store he was climbing brick retainer walls!

Nice.

Then Owen gave us a car tour of Downtown.

The Alamo

Somehow... the picture of the Alamo is the only thing that came out at all decently. Well that and some pictures of our riveting trip to the gas station... where my very handy spouse informed me that I was dangerously low on air in my tires..... so he fixed it!

The price of gas in downtown San Antonio.

My handy hubby filling my tires.... Let's ignore the dirtiness that is my van... Living in El Paso has taught me to not waste water washing it, cause 2 seconds after you do the wind is gonna blow and get your whole car covered in dust again.

Then we went to our hotel... called The Rodeway Inn. It looks nicer than it did in person.... but it was a pretty decent hotel, all things considered....

Then we went to bed. That pretty much concludes the first day of our trip. Saturday was all about Sea World.... and I think it deserves its own post... so once the kidlets go to bed for the night... I will write about that.