April 11 - Yard Party

The Mountain View gang got together this afternoon for music, bocce balls, chatter, lots of laughter, and food.

Great playing and singing was enjoyed by all.

Focused!

Galen trying to remotely guide his ball away from the flower garden.

Galen, Jack, Roger, and Donny.  Congratulations to Galen and Jack, the undefeated champions!  They played and won one game.

The guys measure the distance before getting the ball out from under the car.

Time to eat!

March 30 - On the Road Again

We finally made it out of San Antonio!  We'd planned to spend a few days in Denton and visit family but that plan was foiled by a slide that wouldn't go all the way in.  Luckily it was an easy fix - we just needed to get the slide back on track and tighten the tension on the chain and we were ready to roll.  We saw the remains of a spectacular accident on I-35 before we even got out of town.  A semi blew a tire, hit one of those overhead structures that directional signs are put on, and the structure fell on the semi behind the first semi.  No one was hurt, but what a mess!  We left town three hours after the accident and traffic was still backed up for six miles.  Lucky for us the accident was in I-35 South and we were headed north!

A rainy winter makes for very nice bluebonnets and we saw a lot of them along the road from San Antonio to Corsicana.

We spent one night in a church parking lot in Corsicana and two nights in the driveway of our friends in Texarkana.  Becky and Donny were once full time RVers but now have a house and a new dog named Lizzie.  They still have their RV and followed us to Mountain View a week later.

We attended Sunday school and church at Hardy UMC in Texarkana.  What a lovely church.

Everyone was so friendly.  My photos don't begin to do these windows justice but they are beautiful.  The windows were in the back of their old church and people said they wouldn't go to the new church if the windows didn't go, too, so there they are right up front!

March 4 - Music and Friends

Carol, Betty, Pat, and Galen at Chuy's.  We all got together to play music in the afternoon and then went to dinner.  Today would have been Betty and Ken's 45th anniversary and we were celebrating Ken's life and wishing he were with us.

The chips and salsa at Chuy's are served out of the trunk of a car.

Feb 20 - Riverwalk

We had some extra time today so parked at the Brewery and walked along the new section of the Riverwalk to SAMA.  We walked under the glow in the dark fish and under another bridge that sounded like walking through a wild animal park.

We walked past this grotto.

It is February but felt much more like March or April today.

Feb 17 - San Antonio Museum of Art

Our friend, Mary Hogan, is training to be a docent at SAMA and took us on a great tour today.  Since it was just the three of us, we got to hear some very interesting stories not shared with the regular tours.  The eyes above are from an Egyptian anthropoid coffin.

The iridescence on this small vase came from many, many years of being buried underground.

This is a drinking bowl and the eyes are meant to startle other drinkers into not drinking too much.

Greek children probably learned the Greek alphabet with the help of figures like this female phi and female alpha.

This is one of my favorite rooms in the museum.  It is both eerie and beautiful.

The Romans must have had tiny appetites.  The plates in this photo are only about three inches in diameter.

I took our granddaughter Alex to SAMA when she was four or five and after we'd toured the entire museum, I asked her what she liked best.  She liked the elevator!  It is impressive - all glass and nearly completely silent.  Alex wanted to be an artist from a very early age and did enjoy the art, too.

This bowl may not look like much in this photo but if you could see it up close, you would see that all the marks in the background of the bowl are actually tiny little butterflies.

One small room was devoted to a Chinese cricket exhibit.  One thousand years ago the affluent Chinese kept crickets for fighting and for music and built elaborate homes for them as well as coffins, beds, arenas, duplexes, and special cages so the singing crickets could be taken on strolls.  Singing crickets were called "Golden Bell" crickets.  Fighting crickets were not allowed to fight so long that they would be hurt.

This cricket house is made of a gourd that was wrapped as it grew.

Cricket-sized food and water bowls.

This intricate and impressive mandala is one of only four in museums in the United States.  Mandala's are normally destroyed after a few days but permission was given by the Dalai Lama #14 to preserve this one.  A vaporized glue, settled over the sand and pigment of this 5x5' mandala, made it possible to move the mandala without destroying it.

Jan 27 - Riverwalk

There hasn't been much winter in San Antonio so far this year.  Galen and I like taking the park and ride downtown and walking out to the library and back.  It was so beautiful today we stopped at Rivercenter Mall for lunch on the way back and ate outside so we could listen to the live music and take photos of the tourists.

Jan 8 and 29 - Wurzbach Parkway

January 8, 2012

January 29, 2012

It has been a month since I've posted anything partly because we are still in San Antonio and there are lots of things to do besides take photos.  We are normally only here for two months but this year we'll be here a total of four months.  We had planned to be in Florida by now, but you know how plans can be sometimes.  Anyway, I started shooting photos of the newest section of the Wurzbach Parkway on our way to church on Sunday mornings.  When completed the parkway will run from the west side of the city to the east side.  The eastern end runs along side the RV park where we stay.  This section is in the middle and will run right past our church, Coker UMC, that has been hidden away between Blanco and West Avenue for the last 125+ years.