Road Mama and the Road Daughters

The girls and I headed north to San Antonio on Tuesday morning and stopped at the Denny's by the Riverwalk mall for brunch, which got us two hours of free parking, as well.  While I like to find funky little independent places (with food that has actual flavor) to eat at while "traveling" (we never go very far from the I-37/I-35 corridor), the Girl's food allergies have pretty much put an end to that.  There are a couple of independent restaurants here in town that I trust in so much as one can trust anyone with these things, but it mainly has to be the big bad chains for us, because they have allergen menus and/or big enough kitchens and training to make it work.  Anyways, this Denny's was super nice and helpful.  We headed over to the mall for the Dinosaur-Quest exhibit that my neighbor had told me about.  Lots of dinosaur skeletons for the six-year-old paleontologist-in-training and a chatty paleontologist who gave her his card.  Very cool.  Then we moved the car (there is a $2 -per-day lot under a bridge off Houston Street by a Red Roof Inn) and walked back to the mall as a pass-through to the Riverwalk and took the boat ride - third time for the Lone Star Baby and it still thrills her.

We drove on towards Austin and supped at a Whataburger (grilled cheese) a bit south of the city.  Then we continued on and found the Ramada Inn near Yager Ln.  without any trouble and the LSB commenced her new (but short-lived) Disney Channel addiction extravaganza.  I have to give props to this hotel.  It was inexpensive as clean and safe lodgings go ($45.99 per night), totally clean and I, as a woman alone with children, felt totally safe there. They were not polite when I tried to get some not-yet-in-the-common-container-near-the-nut-cereals milk to use on the cereal and bananas I'd packed for breakfast, but people outside of the medical and restaurant industries are so uninformed about the seriousness of cross-contamination issues that one could hardly expect helpfulness there, I guess.  Milkless, we went to another Denny's  for breakfast on Wednesday (the one near St. John's Avenue and an Exxon, not the one more South that is by a Starbucks - the one by the Starbucks is filthy; we have never yet figured out how to get off the freeway at the right time to access the other little diner-y looking one off the freeway), which was also super nice and helpful.  I guess Denny's has gotten over its past issues with racism, thank heavens, because all the ones we have gone to are filled with very diverse patrons and staff.  I have noticed, though, that people north of San Antonio look at you a little funny if you are a white person whose speech is interspersed with bits of Spanish like gracias and si.  We in South Texas will have to help yankees adjust to the future in which we will all speak Spanglish, apparently.  That's okay - we like to help. 

Wednesday was about the TCEQ meeting in the main and I posted about that yesterday.  We also wandered through the big, giant Whole Foods on Lamar and BookPeople, two of our required urban hippie family field trip stops.  I was not about to try to find MonkeyWrench Books without help, given my sense of direction, and wasn't likely to enjoy BookWoman without LSP along to wrangle the LSB, so that was really enough.  We found a treenut and seafood-free Chipotle's for dinner and played Follow The Leader in its shopping center for awhile before heading back to the hotel for another Disney Channel extravaganza (that Phineus and Ferb show is kind of cute), while I made phone calls to family.

Thursday morning, we checked out of the hotel, gassed up and munched dry cereal on our way to the state capitol building for a self-guided ramble culminating in the thrilling purchase of a piece of granite for the LSB which led to running all over the complex pointing out what buildings, sidewalk sections and monument bases were made of granite.  We found a clean and helpful IHOP in Kyle or someplace near there for lunch (something I would not have expected possible based upon my past experiences with our local IHOP) and then drove South to the Natural Bridge Caverns.  The Lone Star Girl and I visited all of Texas' show caves (that had tours then) when she was between the ages of 4-8 and adored it  This was the Lone Star Baby's first cave tour and I think we will make the circuit for her, too, because she really loved it (and loved buying fossils and stones in the gift shop).  Then we drove home, experiencing a scary patch of rain that convinced me to pull over until visibility was restored right before reaching the city limits.  Now we are home.

A really great vacation, in spite of the TCEQ Commissioners, the storm and other unbloggable complicating factors!  We enjoyed it!