December 6-10, 2018: The Birthday Boys in San Antonio
	November 1-18, 2018: Our Fall Trip to Florida
	Return to the Index for 2018

As we did last year, Fred and I have come down to San Antonio to spend Thanksgiving with Prudence and Ron, Nancy and Karl, and Guy. We traveled down there on the 21st, helped prepare Thanksgiving Dinner on the 22nd, celebrated my birthday on the 23rd, and walked a new section of the Riverwalk, and visited the Botanical Garden. I also spent a good deal of time at Art Gallery Prudencia with Prudence working on her website.

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).

Thanksgiving

This will be the second year that we have come down to San Antonio for Thanksgiving. Since there are so few friends in Dallas now that don't go home for the Holiday, we enjoy spending it with folks who are as close as family.

The Dinner Table at Thanksgiving

In addition to Prudence and Ron, Nancy and Karl, Fred and myself, and Guy, Ron invited a friend of his to have dinner with us. At left is our group (sans Fred who is taking the picture). And below are some of the other candid shots Fred and I took during the day:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

My Birthday

Since my birthday is usually close to Thanksgiving, we've also begun the practice of celebrating it with the Ruckmans, Gleims, and Guy when we are down here for Thanksgiving, and we did the same this year. Fred took a few candid shots after dinner when he presented me with a cake, and the best of these are below:

Ron, myself, and Guy are sitting in the sunroom waiting for everyone before having cake.

Me and the cake, with Guy sitting next to me.

As he often does, Guy included a poem in his birthday card, and I'm reading it aloud.

Now we get to the good part as I am cutting the cake!

A Visit to the San Antonio Botanical Garden

On Saturday, while Prudence and I were working at the gallery, Fred and Guy made a quick trip over to the San Antonio Botanical Garden, which is just a couple of miles from the gallery.

Getting to the San Antonio Botanical Garden from either Ruckman House or Art Gallery Prudencia is very easy, and Guy knows the way very well as he often goes there for his daily walks. Here's where it's located:

When they came back to the gallery, Fred said they'd spent most of their time walking around the pond that is in the center of the Texas Pineywoods section of the garden, and the pictures they brought back were mostly taken there.

Fred came back with eight or ten pictures, three of which I want to include here:

The Pond

Pond Residents

LEGO Figures Near the Cabin

A Stroll Along the Riverwalk

On Sunday, Prudence took Jax for a walk along a portion of the San Antonio Riverwalk that Fred and I have not traversed, and so we, along with Guy, accompanied her.

At left is a map of the Riverwalk System, which now extends from the Witte Museum on the north all the way south to the Missions and beyond. We have walked much of it before, and some of it numerous times. Today, we will walk from the Blue Star Arts district north for a mile or so to just south of downtown and back again.

Here is a section of that Riverwalk map, enlarged to show the area of our walk:

So Guy and Fred and Prudence and Jax and I drove down to the Blue Star Arts Complex, parked, and headed over to the Riverwalk. You can see about where we are on the map extract above.

From the parking area, we walked down some steps to the Riverwalk itself. Here at the arts complex there is a kind of overlook beside the paved walk, and that's where I got the picture at right. We started walking north along the west side of the river towards the bridge that carries Douth Alamo Street over the San Antonio River. That's where I took the picture below:

We continued walking to come to the South Alamo Street bridge, and that's where we found another of the many really neat waterfalls and water features that dot the length of the San Antonio Riverwalk. When the city first began constructing the walkways on both sides of the San Antonio River, they made the decision to make the walks more of an attraction in and of themselves, and so, all along the Riverwalk, there are waterfalls, sculptures, footbridges, exhibits, and all kinds of other interesting things for people to do and/or see.

Approaching the South Alamo Street Bridge (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

In the movie, you can see that there are two water features here at the bridge. One is the waterfall that is just on the south side of the bridge. This particular waterfall was constructed so that the northern section of the river is level and than the water doesn't flow too fast downhill. The other water feature is a beautiful "spillway" that takes some of the river around the waterfall.

I think the reason that this rock-lined spillway was created was to illustrate to people how fast the water might be flowing had not the barrier here at South Alamo Street been constructed. The water flows quite fast through the spillway; the spillway itself begins just north of the bridge where some water is allowed to enter it. Then the spillway goes under the west side walkway, continues under the bridge and then goes back under the walkway south of the bridge to rejoin the rest of the river.

The separate watercourse was fun to walk along; the agile can actually leave the walkway and step along the rocks that line the spillway, jumping back to the main walkway north of the bridge. Fred took a couple of picture of me here- one at the south end of the spillway and one just after we came under the bridge:

Me Beside the Alamo Street Spillway

At the Top of the Spillway

These kinds of water features are not found downtown; that's the older section of the Riverwalk and, in any case, there was neither the need for or the space for little channels and waterfalls like this one. It seems, since we have walked most of the length of the Riverwalk, that these features are found mostly in the newer sections on the north and south.

Walking North of Alamo Street (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

We continued underneath and then north of the Alamo Street bridge, and I made another movie as I was walking along. In it you can see everyone else and also more of the spillway and channel and the area near this bridge. You can use the player at left to watch this movie.

In the area just north of Alamo Street we also took a number of pictures of ourselves on the walk and of the area nearby- on both sides of the river. Here are some of those pictures:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

As you can see from some of those pictures, Fall has come to San Antonio and there is a fair amount of color around on those types of trees whose leaves do change. (It actually gets kind of boring around most of Texas as most of our trees are live oaks that keep their green color year round. Only when a hardwood has been planted do we get much color at all.)

Heading Under Arsenal Street

We continued north on our two-mile walk towards downtown, and across the river could see the old Pioneer Flour Mill, which is adjacent to the King William Historic District. In fact, the Guenther mansion (the founder and owner of the mill and flour company) is over there as well.

I took the picture at right as I was catching up to Prudence, Ron, and Guy, and you can see that we are about to go under a footbridge across the river. (A couple of the pictures I took here at this footbridge are below.) The group is just approaching it, and I wanted to get a picture from in front of them, so I sprinted ahead, passed them, and turned around to get a picture of Prudence, Jax, and Fred as they headed under the bridge.

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Just past the footbridge we came to the site of the San Antonio Arsenal- some of which is still standing.

San Antonio Arsenal Historical Marker

I'd not walked past the arsenal complex before, although I'd seen it on Riverwalk diagrams before. This was, of course, the first time Fred and I have walked along this particular part of the Riverwalk between downtown and the Blue Star Arts Complex. We have walked or biked almost all of the Riverwalk south of Blue Star, through downtown, and north to the Pearl Brewery complex.

Here are a few of the pictures we took along this portion of the Riverwalk going by the arsenal complex:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Just past the arsenal itself, Fred got ahead of us so he could take a picture of Prudence, Jax, and me.

Just past the point where Fred's last picture was taken, we came across an explanatory sign describing the arsenal and its history. I thought you might want to read it and look at its pictures, so I have put a photograph of the sign in the scrollable window below for you to read if you wish:

It was at this point that we began hearing faint music, and when we'd wallked a short distance further on to go under the bridge that carries Cesar Chavez Boulevard over the Riverwalk, we found the source of the music.

A Street Musician Under the Chavez Bridge (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

I made what turned out to be a pretty good movie of the street musician on the other side of the river. I used my zoom partway through the movie to get a closer look, and the movie ended right when his song did. Use the player at left to watch and listen to the performer.

As we continued up the Riverwalk, we could begin to see downtown ahead of us, and on the other side of the river we began to see some of the new office and residential buildings that have been constructed here south of downtown in recent years:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Ahead of us we could see another level-control dam, this one just south of downtown and just south of where the two branches of the Riverwalk (which divides on the north side of downtown to create more waterside real estate as a channel was built that goes east, then south and then west to rejoin the main channel) come back together.

The Dam at Villita Street

As you can see in the picture at right, there is a set of stairs that you can take to get up to Villita Street (or you can continue on the Riverwalk itself on into downtown proper). We took the stairs up as we were at the northern end of the section of the Riverwalk that we had not been on before. We actually intended to head back to Blue Star on the other side of the river this time.

Up on the bridge Fred took a nice picture of Guy and myself, and I snapped a few pictures from both sides of the bridge a we crossed over to the east side. Here are some of those pictures:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

From the top of the Villita Street bridge, I took a set of three pictures looking south along the way we had come, and I stitched those pictures together into this panoramic view:

Looking South from the Villita Street Bridge

Fred at the Statue of Francisco Madero

The three of us (and Jax) crossed over to the east side of the river, and it was at that point that Guy said that he had some preparations to do for a hospital visit later that afternoon and that he thought he should walk back to the house. From here, it's about a two-mile walk back to Ruckman Haus, so it's not all that far. I thought that it might be good if I kept Guy company and walked back with him, so it was here that we split up for a while.

Before we did, I noticed that there was a statue in a little park area over on the east side of the bridge. It turned out to be a statue of Francisco Madero. Francisco Ignacio Madero González (1873 – 1913) was a Mexican revolutionary, writer and statesman who served as the 33rd president of Mexico from 1911 until shortly before his assassination in 1913. He was an advocate for social justice and democracy. Madero was notable for challenging Mexican President Porfirio Díaz for the presidency in 1910 and being instrumental in sparking the Mexican Revolution.

If you would like to see a closer view of the statue itself, just click here.

Apparently, Madero had a Texas connection (which is why his statue is here), and if you would like to read the sign that you can see left of Fred in the picture, just click here.

Our walk back was quite pleasant, as we covered ground that we've covered before; on our many visits to Prudence and Ron I think we have been just about every part of downtown San Antonio and King William, and the route was pretty straightforward. Along the way, we were chatting about inconsequentials, and every so often I'd see something that I thought was worth a picture. I'm not going to include all of them, but here's a selection of them:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Fred and Prudence Visit Confluence Park

As Guy and I were walking back to the house, Fred and Prudence and Jax walked back to the Blue Star Arts Complex- but along the east side of the river this time.

Pavilions at Confluence Park

Since I wasn't with them, I can't say why Prudence and Fred decided that when they got back to the car they would drive the short distance further south to the relatively new Confluence Park, but decide that they did. At left is a map that will show you where Confluence Park is, and I've marked their walk south along the river and then the probable route they would have taken from Blue Star to the Park itself.

In early 2016, for the first time in its history, the River Walk was connected with another linear urban walkway, the San Pedro Creek Greenway. The greenway joins with the River Walk at the confluence of the San Pedro Creek and the San Antonio River near Mission Concepción. Near that confluence, on a hill above the San Antonio River, Confluence Park was constructed.

Probably the best place to start is to let you read the explanatory sign about the park; Fred took a good photograph of it and I have enhanced it to make it easier to read. It is in the scrollable window below:

As you can see in the picture above of some of the structures here at Confluence Park, they seem to be some kind of futuristic, fanciful design, but, as it turns out, they actually serve a function- as part of a water catchment system. For example, if you take a look at the picture below, left, you will see one of what appear to be simple supports for one of the arched shelters.

Confluence Park Catchment

But if you look closely, note the drain at the base, and the staining where water is caught by the canopy and then funneled down into that drain. If you want to learn more about this interesting system, you can read the sign that was nearby; it is in the scrollable window below:

Fred took a number of good pictures around the small park, and when he and Prudence went down by the river, he got some good pictures there too. There was also one about the history of the Pioneer Mill, a picture of which we got when we were walking along the RiverWalk earlier in the day. Here are some of those pictures:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Those were the things we did on this particular trip to San Antonio, although Prudence and I did a bunch of work on her gallery website. I have started showing her how to do things herself, if she wishes, and I think she is a pretty quick study. We very much enjoyed our visit with everyone, and, for the umpteenth time, are indebted to Prudence and Ron for their hospitality!

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

	December 6-10, 2018: The Birthday Boys in San Antonio
	November 1-18, 2018: Our Fall Trip to Florida
	Return to the Index for 2018