Sonya's Blog - Day 239 - The Alamo

Sonya’s Blog - Day 239 - February 16th - The Alamo

Today we wanted to explore The Alamo and San Antonio’s famous Riverwalk. First, we had to deal with some financial stuff.

Our renters, who signed a year long lease, have decided to break their lease and move out at the end of the month. We have been trying to decided what we should do, but it has been difficult to get a straight answer from the company that rents out our property. The problem is that we signed a contract with them that allows them to rent our property out until July 1st, if we break that contract then we owe them fees for the months remaining on the rental contract. Since we are not the ones breaking the contract, the renter’s are, do we need to list the property on the rental market again to fulfil our end of the contract? If our house does not rent out again (it would be a very short rental period, only 4 months), then where does that put us financially? We had to figure all these things out, so we could make some plans. Decisions, decisions.

We may end up coming back to Calgary, if our house does not rent out again, so we can move our stuff back in and take care of some other stuff. There is no point in paying storage fees, on top of our full mortgage, if our house is empty. It would also allow me to get my Driver’s Licence, which I miss terribly and allow Blake to have some face to face meetings with work people. It would also allow us to see Suzanne and family, as they will be in Calgary at the same time. The kids are interested in seeing their friends as well. It would also allow us to re-set the clock, so to speak, in terms of our travel insurance and time in the USA. All good things!

If our house does rent, then we have to decide what to do as well. Do we still make the long trek home, after visiting Phoenix so that we can accomplish everything listed above? Or do we continue on with the original plan, which has us rushing through Oregon and Washington State so that we can make the border on April 11th (the date our travel insurance runs out in the States). The other advantage of going home, is we will go through Utah and when we decide to continue our trip, we would go by the way of Colorado - so we would add more to our trip. Not going home, saves us a lot of extra driving and makes us stick to our original schedule. I think we will end up heading to Calgary for a couple of weeks at the end of March, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

It took most of the day to accomplish all of our tasks, which was a bit of a bummer. We headed into the historic district of San Antonio, just so we did something. It took us awhile to find parking, as all the lots were flat rates ($10 to $20), which we had no desire to pay. We finally found street parking and it only cost us $1.80, so that was much better. We walked to The Alamo first. I will admit, I know nothing about The Alamo. I just know it is famous and you hear it mentioned a lot (no, I did not see the movie).

It was not always known as The Alamo, when it was established in 1718 it was known as San Antonio de Valero and was a Spanish Mission. The whole purpose was to convert the indigenous people to the Catholic faith. The other goal of the mission was to convert the natives to the Spanish way of life and provide protection from warrior tribes. They hoped to establish a productive and self-sufficient people, who would be loyal to Spain. Due to many reasons, the mission was secularized in 1793 and control passed to local authorities. By 1803 the mission was now home to Spanish soldiers and their families, due to increasing threats from other countries. This garrison was often called “The Alamo Company” and soon the mission was simply referred to as The Alamo. When Mexico declared it’s independence from Spain in 1821, The Alamo remained a military outpost, but the soldiers had switched their allegiance to the newly independent nation. The sparse population of Texas, made it hard to defend, so it was decided that Texas would be opened up to colonization by the Americans. Mexico would grant tracts of lands, to applicants it had scrutinized and approved, and they were called empresarios.

It took only 5 years to to overwhelm the Mexican territory with Americans. Within 5 years the population went from 500 to more than 30,000. Due to all sorts of reasons and policies that were implemented the residents of Texas became increasingly revolutionary. This resulted in the Texas Revolution which started on October 2, 1835. In late October, there was a battle for San Antonio that lasted 5 days. In the end the Texians took control of the town and the Mexican’s retreated. On February 23rd, 1836 Santa Anna and his army arrived to crush this rebellion. The Texian rebels retreated and holed themselves up inside The Alamo. The Rebels were greatly outnumbered and The Alamo was soon surrounded by Santa Anna’s forces. Alamo commander, William Travis, began writing desperate pleas for help. It was to no avail, Santa Anna stormed The Alamo on March 6, 1936 and all the combatants were killed. The women and children that survived the siege, about 20 altogether, were spared. David Crockett and James Bowie were among the dead. The battle lasted about 90 minutes. Sam Houston was able to surprise the Mexican Army on April 21st and achieve independence for Texas, to cries of “Remember The Alamo”, by capturing Santa Anna in the 18 minute battle.

Texas became a Republic from 1837 to 1845, but Mexico still refused to give up it’s claim to the territory. There were many small battles and invasions that continued on throughout the years. The Republic of Texas ended on February 19, 1846 when it joined the United States Union after a year of negotiations. Now the US Army was able to move into Texas and they took up residence at the Alamo, made some improvements and called it home for about 30 years. This benefitted San Antonio and it became a commercial and military hub for Texas. During the Civil War, it was occupied by Confederate troops, but it was all civil and there were no battles over this. US Army troops returned after the Civil War. In the early 1900’s the site was turned into a Shrine for the fallen soldiers of the 1836 battle, known as The Shrine of Texas Liberty. They love their Shrines in the States!

So we got some pictures and looked around and then headed over to the Riverwalk. This is a really great place. You have to descend to the Riverwalk, the city has been built up above the river’s level, due to it’s propensity to flood. The riverwalk is a series of connecting walkways underneath the streets of downtown San Antonio. During the early to mid 1900’s, a businessman decided that the area would be great for commercial development and submitted a plan to have it developed and some dams and river channeling put into place to prevent it from flooding. The idea caught on and it has been going ever since. There are mostly restaurants along the riverwalk, you can also catch water taxis or take a water tour. It was really cool, like a hidden city and we enjoyed walking the Riverwalk back to our truck (which took us awhile to find because we could not remember the name of the street we parked it on)! Here are some pictures.

That was it for our day. We just headed back to the RV and had some supper and then hung out for the rest of the evening.

Sonya