2013 Vacation Day 8: One last thing to see

Lydia woke up first and wandered around for a while until Brandon took her down to breakfast to keep her from waking the rest of us up.  Charlotte, Derrick, and I were awake by the time they came back upstairs.  So we all went back down to breakfast.  Unlike the last hotel this one actually had a decent continental breakfast.  The waffle iron even made waffles shaped like Texas.  Here are the kids enjoying their food and watching the news on the TV right above them.

Then it was back up to the room to get everything packed up one final time.  This was the last day of our vacation and it was totally obvious by the way we shoved everything where ever it would fit.  

We said goodbye to the "tel." And drove out of town.  We drove about 20 minutes to San Marcos where the final thing on our vacation itinerary was located.  We would have stayed in a hotel in San Marcos, but by the time I was booking one on hotwire the only ones left were out of our price range.

Several weeks ago I'd asked my facebook friends for ideas of things to do in Texas.  My friend Cherylee told me about a place called Aquarena Springs.  I did a quick google search and found out that Texas State University provided glass bottom boat tours on the clear water of the springs.  That sounded awesome to me so I included it on the list of things I for sure wanted to see on vacation.

By the time we got to the springs Lydia and Derrick had fallen asleep and were both snoring softly.

Charlotte and I went to buy the tickets while they stayed in the car with Brandon and slept.  Funny story about Charlotte.  Ever since Wednesday Charlotte had been answering every question with the phrase "I don't."  She said it to: "Do you want to see the whales, do you want to eat, do you want to play, do you want to hold my hand, do you want to go to sleep?" No matter what we asked she would respond with "I don't."  She'd always do what she said she didn't want to do, she just liked saying, "I don't."  It got to the point where we would ask "do you want to ____?" and then say, "let me guess, you don't."

We bought the tickets and then waited in the car for Derrick and Lydia to wake up.  Our tickets were for an 11:30 boat ride and I think we ended up waking the kids up around 11:20.  We walked the short distance to the boat dock and soon we were staring out the bottom of a glass bottomed boat.

The kids all loved being able to see plants and fishies in the water.  Derrick was especially enthralled by it.  He made happy grunting noises the whole time.

It was kind of hard to get pictures through the glass.  The ones I have don't do it justice.  I was amazed by what we could see.  I would consider this boat ride in the top 20 cool things I've done in my life.  This is a picture of some of the small springs that provide water.

Here are the girls looking at the plants in the water.

Like I said, Derrick was fascinated.

More plants.  Some of the plants even had flowers blooming on them.  The water is so clear, and they get so much sunlight they don't know they are underwater.

This is the largest of the springs.  No plants grow around it because so much water flows out of it.

Here is the boat we rode on.  It'd the oldest boat and has been in operation since 1945.  The boat ride lasted about 30 minutes which again was a tad too long for the kids.  Charlotte and Lydia started looking out the sides of the boat and I was terrified they would fall over.  Other than that it was a great experience.  

There was a building next to the springs.  It opened in the 1920's as a hotel.  Now it has some displays and aquariums.  

The girls like looking at the aquariums.  Some how Charlotte had missed seeing every turtle that the boat had passed over.  This was a good chance for her to see a turtle.  

I got one of my usual souvenir pennies.  These are still my favorite souvenirs.

Derrick had more fun grunting at fish.

The girls discovered a little table where they could color.  They were there for a while.

When we were done inside we went up on the roof and looked around.  Here are the three other boats giving tours of the springs.

See how clear the water is.

This is where the water starts flowing for the whole San Marcos River.  Our river guide said, "the reason there water doesn't go past that point is because there is no water past that point."

We took the kids down to the jeep.  We asked them if they wanted to go home or if they wanted to find a children's park that was on the San Marcos map.  Surprisingly they wanted to go home.  So we grabbed a bunch of snack food for the drive home and started driving.  Here is a picture of our jeep.  This will be the last vacation we go on with this jeep.  Our plan is to still keep the jeep (it was our first baby after all) but get a second car that will fit a family of 6 - and a friend or two. 

The kids all fell asleep on the way home.  Brandon and I didn't talk much on the way home.  We both were kind of depressed that we had to go back to reality.

Our vacation had been wonderful.  Full of adventure and relaxation.  The kids had had a great time too.  The girls kept saying, "cation" with big smiles on their faces.  And they talked non stop about everything that had happened.  Derrick had been in a wonderful mood the whole trip.  He was even eating baby food consistently again.

If I have one regret it's that we weren't able to go see a cave.  But not for lack of caves to see.  I found at least five in the vicinity of our travels.  (For future reference they are Natural Bridge Caverns, Inner Space Caverns, Sonora Caverns, Cave Without a Name, and Fault Line Cave.)  Instead it was Derrick that put the kibosh on any cave visiting.  He can't walk yet, but he weighs around 25 pounds.  The caves either didn't allow babies in packs at all or only allowed them in front packs.  Neither Brandon or I wanted to pay $19 to carry Derrick around for 90 minutes while keeping two twins (who also weigh around 25 lbs) happy.  So going in a cave got shelved until another vacation when all our kids can walk.

Another thing that got shelved was going to see waterfalls. Again, not because of lack of falls to see.  Instead all the waterfalls I found are within an hour of our house.  We plan on seeing them as part of the many camping trips we'll go on this year.

But even without waterfalls and caves I'd had a great time. Sure, I saw more animals than I ever thought I would care to see in a week, but I'd enjoyed watching my kids react to them.  It was totally worth it.

All too soon we were in Killeen and then back on Fort Hood.  Brandon signed back in signaling the end of our travels.  We went home and decided we weren't ready for the responsibility of figuring out what was for dinner.  So Brandon picked up pizza at Little Caesar's.

Here are Derrick and Brandon proving that they had finally bonded this week.

Then we just hung around the house while starting to unpack and do laundry.  And that was the end of our awesome road trip family vacation for this year.

2013 Vacation Day 7: Walking into the tourist trap

Mornings are hard on vacation.  The kids just want to get going yet there is so much to do to get ready for the day.  Friday was no exception.  We ended up taking them down to the car and putting them in their seats.  Then I went back up to the hotel room and finished packing everything up.  Brandon stayed with the car and arranged everything.  Then we traded places and he brought down all the heavy stuff and put it away.

We didn't even bother with the tiny "continental breakfast" the hotel provided.  Instead we went to Denny's because I've wanted to go there with the kids for awhile.  I don't know why I thought that would be fun.

We used up all of our "polite kid time" waiting to be seated, and waiting for our food.  Lydia remembered her love for sugar packets, and Charlotte discovered "blocks."  (There was no way I was telling her there was jelly inside.) 

By the time the food arrived the kids were ready to go.  They hardly ate the pancakes and eggs we'd ordered for them.  But they did love the orange juice.

I scarfed my food down and then took Charlotte and Derrick (who was basically screaming from tiredness) out to the car.  It had been fun, but it's not something I want to try again for a year or two.

After everyone was situated we drove into downtown San Antonio.  We were planning on seeing two things there: the Riverwalk and the Alamo.  We took the long way on the side streets so Derrick could get a little nap.

We had a little bit of trouble finding the Alamo.  I knew I should have had a more detailed city map.  But soon we saw huge crowds of people and we knew we were in the right place.  We also knew we might have a big problem for the day.

Brandon and I usually try to go on vacation in May.  That's the month of our anniversary, and it's also a month that kids are still in school.  Usually we'll be hanging out at places with a bunch of retired and/or foreign people.  When we spent 10 days in Southern Utah in 2010 we hardly heard unaccented English the whole time.

But this year we'd inadvertently scheduled our vacation for the same week as Spring Break.  All week we'd been dealing with large groups of people.  For the most part though we had been in places that could handle large groups of people.  Not so in the area around the Alamo.  It was a bad combination of two of our least favorite things: a major city and a tourist trap.

We took a "quick" (20 minute) drive around the block to get our bearings and see if there was a cheap place to park.  We settled on the RiverCenter Mall parking terrace.  It was $4 for the first hour and $3 for every 20 minutes after that, but it was cheaper than the lots that wanted $15 up front.

Lindsey had warned me that the triple stroller wouldn't work very well on the river walk which had a lot of stairs.  We thought that maybe we could still use it to go see the Alamo, but I wasn't sure it would even fit in the parking lot elevators.  So we just used the umbrella stroller for Derrick.  I held tightly to the girls hands as we navigated through the mall and down to the Riverwalk.

The Riverwalk is what I wanted to see most.  The San Antonio river flows through the center of the city and has been incorporated as a major part of the city.  Restaurants an other businesses line the river.  There are paths on the bank of the river.  It's all gorgeous.

I would have loved to walk all around the river and see everything up close, but I knew that wouldn't be possible with all the kids in tow - even with the triple stroller.  Fortunately, Lindsey told me about the boats that provide 25 minute river tours.

Brandon and Derrick waited in line for the tickets while I took the girls on a little walk over some of the bridges.  Then in a relatively short amount of time, considering how many people there were, we were on a boat on the river.

San Antonio is OLD.  It has history dating back like 300 years.  There is a huge Spanish and catholic influence in the city too.  Everything had a story.

For the most part the kids loved the boat.  They'd talked about it whenever I asked them what we were going to do on vacation and as far as I know it was what they expected.  For some reason the girls like to say "Ewwww" every time we went under a bridge.  

I'm so glad we decided to see the city this way.  It was a good way to get a quick idea of what the city was like.

Here is what the boat looked like.  We sat in the middle so we didn't have to worry about any of the kids taking a dive over the edge.  

Even 25 minutes ended up being a little too long for our kids.  The last 10 or so minutes were a little tense as we tried to keep them all happy.  Charlotte and Lydia ended up sitting on the floor between our legs.  Oh well, at least they were young enough that their tickets had been free so it wasn't a waste.  Brandon and I enjoyed it.

We got off the boat and went to find somewhere to eat.  We found this place that we perfect because it didn't have water next to it and no one else was there.

The kids had a blast playing in the leaves.  All week long Brandon had been in charge of the food.  I liked being able to sit back and see what foods he'd packed in the backpack for that day.  I'd always be like, "oh I totally forgot we brought these!"

The kids played around for a long time.  Lydia ended up with dirt all over her face so eventually we went into the mall to find a bathroom to clean her up in and do diaper changes.  This mall must have been designed by the same company that did City Creek Center in Salt Lake.  There was ONE bathroom for the whole main level of the mall.  I had to wait to use it. Then I had to wait while a new mom changed her 2 month old's diaper.  I was fighting an urge to just do it for her.  In the amount of time it took her to change his diaper I could have had all three of my kids done.  

After FOREVER we finally were ready to get going again.  Brandon took the girls on their first ever escalator ride.  They liked it.  

We went outside and started walking towards the Alamo.  The Alamo hadn't been on my list of things to see in San Antonio - or really ever.  But it kept coming up when I talked to people about things to do in Texas.  When I found out it was the most visited landmark in Texas I figured we'd better go see it.  But when we got close to it we realized that there was a huge line of people waiting to go into the Alamo. Most of the people in this picture are waiting in line.

Looking back, I really should have put two and two together.  "Most visited landmark" and "spring break" should have sent alarm bells off in my head.  I was content to "Remember the Alamo" and just take this picture.  

The line turned out to be just for the actual Alamo.  There was a whole Temple Square-like area around the Alamo with other buildings we could explore.  We went in there, but really the only thing of interest to us were these orange fish in the water.

In case you are wondering, the Alamo is where David Bowie and Jimmy Buffet took a stand against Santana and died.  Or something like that.  I really could have cared less about what the Alamo was.  Maybe I would have bothered to learn about it if I wasn't dealing with tired kids and a sore back - maybe.

It was a really pretty area and I'm sure one day we will come back and have a better time.  

The girls were beyond tired so Brandon carried both of them the two or so blocks back to the mall.  They were asleep by the time we were in the mall.

We referred to this as "triple stroller appreciation day" and got ready to get the heck out of there.  We "only" had to pay $11 for parking, but it took us FOREVER to get out of the parking terrace because the car in front of us couldn't get their card to work in the payment machine.  We ended up backing out of that lane and going out another.  We were so happy to finally be free of the tourist trap.

San Antonio is only about 2 1/2 hours from home.  So in theory we could have just gone home.  But there were some things I wanted to see on the way home.  So I'd booked a hotel in a town called New Braunfels which was only 10 miles away from the city.  We drove out of town on the back streets so the kids could sleep.

As we drove we talked about random things.  Brandon told me some story from his mission that I've heard before.  He has this way of prefacing stories by saying, "Did I ever tell you about Elder So and So on my mission?"  And I'm always like "YES, why do you even ask anymore!" but in reality I play along and say, "maybe, what's the story?"

You know how normally cute little idiosyncrasies can bug the heck out of you after you've spent a week together.  Well, I decided to bring up the fact that Brandon always says "did I ever tell you about . . ." at the beginning of his stories.  I said, "Look, for the record you have told me all your mission stories.  So you don't need to ask me if you've ever told me about Elder Starky or whoever."

To which Brandon replied with a smile, "You think you've heard all my stories, but you haven't heard all my stories.  Like the time I was walking around with Elder Starky, and ran into a lady who was selling all sorts of jams and she even had a tomato jam.  See you haven't heard them all."

I started laughing.  He was right I'd never heard that story.  We laughed together about that for at least 10 minutes straight.  Brandon said, "I hope your happy.  I was saving that one for a special occasion."

We made it to New Braunfels and found our hotel, the Microtell Inn and Suites.  Through a little booking error I hadn't included the kids as guests at the hotel.  I'd noticed the mistake a few days before our trip.  But when I'd called Hotwire I got a message that they were experiencing a high volume of calls.  I never found time to call back.  I figured we'd all just have an adventure with one bed.

I checked us into the hotel.  Took a quick peek at the room (small, but not tiny) and went back to the jeep.  It was only 5:00 and neither Brandon or I felt like spending the next several hours in the hotel room with the kids.  So we set off to find a park or something.

We ended up following signs to a place called Landa Park.  It reminded me a lot of Liberty Park in Salt Lake - only with a river running through it.  We let the kids get out and run around on the equipment.

We'd been snacking on our supplies of snack food all day so we went super hungry for any sort of dinner.  There was a mini-train running through the park and Brandon ran over to the station to see how much it was.  It was $2.50 a ticket so we took all the kids over to the station to ride the train.

Except Brandon had failed to notice that they only took cash, and we had spent the last of our cash earlier.  Charlotte was so disappointed when we turned around and left the train.  I had to tell her over and over again that we would be right back.  We just had to go get some money.

We drove to at CVS pharmacy and Brandon went inside to buy something and get cash back.  Then we hurried back to the park and bought tickets for the train.  The girls were so excited to have tickets.

Derrick was happy to be on the train.

I pretended to punch the girls tickets like the conductor does on the Polar Express.  Soon the real conductor of this train came to collect our tickets.  The girls were scared of him and they didn't want to give him their tickets.  He didn't help things by ripping the tickets in half after we gave them to him.  The girls still haven't stopped talking about when the "scary ductor - rip ticket"

Soon the train was moving and the ripped tickets were (mostly) forgotten.  

The ride was actually pretty long. All the kids loved it.  Here's Derrick looking like the Mayor of Munchkin Land.

After the train ride we found a picnic bench so we could eat the treats that Brandon had bought to get cash back.  The were Klondike bars that had melted a little bit more than anticipated.

The girls didn't mind one bit.  By the way, this was dinner - gotta love vacations.

Then we fed bread to the ducks.  (We ate some of the bread for dinner too.)  Lydia would yell, "DUCK!" Every time she threw bread into the water.

When we ran out of bread the girls started throwing sticks and rocks into the water.  

It was such a perfect evening and we didn't want it to end yet.  We took the kids on a little walk to see a tree that we'd passed while riding the train.

It was a really cool tree.  Charlotte and Lydia spent a lot of time chasing squirrels.  

 We started slowly walking back to the car, but none of us were in a hurry.  This whole evening had been so nice after the hectic day. Derrick was out of the stroller and crawling around.  Charlotte was pushing the empty stroller.  She kept stopping to put pretend rabbits and squirrels into the stroller.  I just sat down on the sidewalk and watched the kids play around.  The train went by one last time and we all waved at everyone on it.

Then it got dark and it was time to go back to the hotel. The kids had all ended up very dirty so i gave them baths while "Sherpa Dad" carried all our stuff in from the car.  We tried putting the kids right to bed, but they were still a little wired so we watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother.

When that was over we put the kids to bed. Our room had this little window seat that we tried to get the girls to sleep on.  Charlotte wanted to, but Lydia didn't, and they both ended up in the bed anyway.  I laid at the bottom of the bed. I told Brandon there was room for him, but he said all the beds we'd slept on all week had been too soft and he'd rather have the floor.  Derrick started out on the window seat, but when he woke up fussing I brought him in with me so he wouldn't fall off.  Then Brandon took the window seat.

I woke up around 4:00 and couldn't get back to sleep.  So I got on the laptop and checked my e-mail and facebook for the first time in a week.  Then I climbed back in with all the kids and fell asleep again.