We pulled into San Antonio at about 11am, with the Mio GPS unit sending us directly and efficiently to the Alamo. We parked in the shopping mall parking lot and took a short walk to the Alamo.

It takes up a large city block, and includes the old church, some barracks, and a gift shop next to the church. The displays were quite interesting. Inside the gift shop is a scale model of the last fight, about 4×8 feet big. It shows the few Texan soldiers, along with lots of Mexican soldiers. You get a good sense of how much the Texans were outnumbered.

There was quite a crowd inside the gift shop, which had the usual touristy stuff, along with shirts and hats (ball caps, along with some straw hats). I picked up a ball cap with “The Alamo” logo (I figured I would need a hat for the next few stops on the road trip).

After wandering around the Alamo, we walked about three blocks to the “Riverwalk”. This is an area that has a branch of the river running through the town in sort of a loop, with a walkway (and shops, of course) on both sides of the river. There is a tour boat that you can take a ride on around the river loop, so we did the proper touristy thing and climbed on board (after about a half-hour wait).

The weather that day was hot and a bit humid, but the Riverwalk area has lots of shade, so it wasn’t too bad. The boat driver had a nice spiel during the ride.

After the Riverwalk ride, we left town via Interstate 10, heading west. Nice highway, going through slightly hilly country — that part of Texas is not as flat as you would expect.

We headed to Fort Stockton, “The Friendliest Town in Texas”. We planned on visiting the Fort Stockton Fort, but it didn’t seem to be open. It’s not that big of a town, and since it was Sunday, there wasn’t much open — most stores and ‘attractions’ were closed because it was Sunday.

Besides the fort, Fort Stockton is the home to the World’s Largest Roadrunner. His name is “Paisano Pete”, and it is 11 feet tall, 22 feet long. They claim it is a favorite snapshot subject in Fort Stockton.

I believe they are right.