Monday, May 10, 2010

May 10, 2010

After waking up at Camp Wal*Mart and brushing my teeth to the sound of a checkout register, we headed into Houston in rush hour traffic. Luckily, it didn't take too long to get there anyway.

The course was right outside the city. It was a great little riverside park with a skatepark, runner's path and a bunch of other things.

It was great playing with the skyline in the background. Combine two of my favorite things! I played pretty well too.

A lot of the course was situated on the side of hills and right along the edge of the highway so it made for some unique shots. It was only a 9-hole course but surprisingly difficult at times.

Even city courses run the risk of getting your disc caught in a tree and Joanna did just that. Luckily, she had no problem climbing to get it.

Houston gets a good review in my book for this park alone. It's a great thing to have so close to downtown and the course was fun and challenging. The weather was great, too, so thanks for that, Houston!

We got on the highway heading west again and started seeing an abundance of these signs with the beaver logo and always a different (usually really funny) slogan. They didn't give away much to tell you what the place was but we had seen them hundreds of miles away and now we were getting close to it.

It was a little disappointing when we got there since it was just a giant rest stop/novelty store. They had a lot of really good looking things and we did get to sample some tasty fudge. I tried Butterfinger fudge.. pretty delicious.

We arrive in San Antonio and went right to the Alamo of course. We're just big tourists. It was right downtown, which surprised me. Whenever I saw pictures I assumed it was in some little deserted town in Texas but nope, it's right down the street from Starbucks and skyscrapers.

We took a tour of the inside of the main mission, where no photography was allowed, and then this guy took us out to the courtyard to tell us all about the battle. He was a great storyteller. He went into a lot of detail without being boring and he really got into it so we did too.

We walked around the rest of the inside, where General Santa Anna and his troops overtook the Texas fortification only to be captured just a short time later by Sam Houston and his troops nearby. I really enjoyed learning more about the history of the Alamo before getting my obligatory tourist photo by the door.

One of the coolest things about San Antonio is the riverwalk area. You can walk all along about a ten block area along the river, where there are shops, bars and restaurants as well as just a great environment.

We stopped at Casa Rio to have dinner. We wanted real-ish Mexican food so we finally found a place that had it. And we got a table right by the river.

The enchiladas were amazing. All of the food was good but I haven't had enchiladas in a long time and these were not a disappointment at all. I couldn't come close to eating all that was on my plate so I boxed it up for later.

We walked around a bit more after eating but didn't do much else. We thought about going up in the tower but there really isn't anything to see that you would need to be up high for so we headed out of town.

We got to Austin, where we played a little bit of The Backyard disc golf course and planned to camp out after talking to a guy that was playing there.

We only played the first few holes but it was crazy so far. We went up to the church, whose land the course and camp area are on, and talked to some really great guys, Matt and Matt, who found out for us that we couldn't actually camp there. Talking to them was pretty much the best part of my night though. They were just really friendly and awesome people.

They actually helped us find a campground in the area so we headed there. We had to park in the lot and carry our stuff down in a wheelbarrow. It was cool. It was also through a mountainous part of Austin where a lot of famous people live apparently.

We set up camp and checked out the area a bit. It was a nice big camping area with a huge lake right near where we set up that was bringing in the wind.

After we were set up, I watched some things on my computer and had my leftovers, which were still really good, before going to bed. It felt good to lay down on a sleeping bag again.

Total distance: 347.8 miles. It didn't really seem like it. Probably because we took a bunch of short drives.

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