September 25 - October 13, 2020: Our Fall Trip to Florida
	August 6 & 8, 2020: Fred's and Mario's Birthdays
	Return to the Index for 2020

Prudence's Birthday is in late August and Nancy's in early September, so this year they've chosen to celebrate both of them closer to Nancy's actual birthday than to Prudence's. By the time we got down there, the five of them had already celebrated Prudence's (low-key during the Age of Covid), so we will be concentrating on Nancy on this trip.

Getting to the Ruckman's House in San Antonio

You have probably seen an album page where we visit San Antonio, but in case you haven't, I want to show you the route to San Antonio from Dallas and where Prudence and Ron and Guy are located.

On the left-hand map below, you can see the normal route from Dallas down to San Antonio. Not much explanation is necessary; sometimes we take the bypass around Austin, but most times we don't, and the trip to the San Pedro exit in San Antonio is usually four hours plus.

We head north on San Pedro Avenue a couple of miles and then either hang a left on Ashby and a right on Breeden or just a left on French to get to the Ruckmans' house on the northeast corner of Breeden and French.

In case you have not seen them, I have put below first an aerial view of the Ruckmans' house (it is the house on the corner and the garage/apartment building north of it where Guy lives) and a front view of the house (taken in 2010).

Nancy's Birthday Dinner

We arrive at Prudence's house on the afternoon of August 6th, and Nancy's birthday dinner was that same night- at a restaurant called Perry's Steakhouse out near where Nancy and Karl live in north San Antonio. We were a little concerned about going out to eat, but Karl had arranged for us to have a small private room at the restaurant, so we could still sequester after a fashion. Fred and I have been very conscientious since March, although the San Antonio crowd (save Guy, who has had to be fairly strict due to the work he does) has been less so, and we didn't want to undo all that time spent at home by ourselves. (I suppose we will continue to stick pretty much to ourselves until a vaccine is available, and it doesn't look like that will be until next year.)

Anyway, I got out my phone to record the members of our party here at the restaurant:

Nancy - Myself - Prudence

Ron - Karl

Jim - Fred - Guy (Jim is a photographer friend of the Ruckmans)

Nancy - Prudence

Cake and Gifts at Ruckman Haus

After dinner, we all adjourned back to Prudence and Ron's house so we could have a cake that Guy made and shower Nancy (and for us, belatedly Prudence) with her cards and gifts.

At left and below are some candid shots taken at the house:

A Visit with Nancy and Karl

I think it is a tradition with the San Antonio folks to head out to Nancy's house for supper one night a week- and that supper is usually burgers cooked on their patio- as it was on this Sunday evening when we all went out there. I had my phone along, so on the ride out there I had Prudence take a couple of photos of the four of us in the back seat:

Nancy and Karl have a house on a golf course in a gated community in northwest San Antonio. I think that if they had it to do over again, they would rethink the whole "golf course" idea. Nancy got the house partially because her mother played golf and a course at the bottom of the street where they lived in Arlington, so I assume that being near the course had some familiarity value. But I am pretty sure that it wasn't long after they moved in that Nancy discovered that living near a golf course is somewhat different from living on one, as the experience of a few broken windows and numerous broken roof tiles has probably shown.

But the course does provide an excellent place to walk (something Nancy likes to do), and after we ate supper most of us went out to the course to stroll along its cartways. For my part, I thought the sunset inspirational enough to just lie back on one of the artificial hills and enjoy the colors of the sky:

We didn't do much else on our visit. I spent some time with Prudence at the gallery and working on her website with her, and at one point Fred and Guy went over to the Botanical Garden to have a walk around, but all in all this was a low-key visit. We did stop on the way home to spend the night with Denny in Leander, and we enjoyed that a lot.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	September 25 - October 13, 2020: Our Fall Trip to Florida
	August 6 & 8, 2020: Fred's and Mario's Birthdays
	Return to the Index for 2020