2006/01 Southwest USA trip (MN-TX) - Amistad |
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Tuesday January 10th
The rain didn’t arrive but it was much cooler, down in the 40s by morning. We were leaving San Antonio and heading west across Texas to Big Bend, but first we wanted to take a look at the other missions. The Franciscan friars built six of them in the area, all close to the San Antonio River and most still survive as churches, but within a National Historic Park. Most of them saw military action as they were the only defensible buildings in what was then a Spanish colony.
By the time we got to the Mission San Jose we had a sunny day in the 60s. This mission is almost complete, as it has the walled playa that’s disappeared under streets at the Alamo. The Indians lived in little cottages in the walls, and the corners had bastions with gun slots for shooting at the Apaches when they came shopping. The church looked almost Moroccan, the Moorish influence on the Spaniards I guess.
We had lunch by the river and went to visit one more, the Mission Espada. This was further from the river, so the friars had built a stone aqueduct to carry water across the valley to where an acequia (canal) could take it within the walls. 
This mission has pretty brick tops to its arches, and a church still decorated for Christmas, with the most elaborate nativity scene. We couldn’t go into the convent section as that’s still being used as a school, but the museum had a lot of stuff, including a docent whose grandfather was associated with the mission back in the 1800s.
Even now there was too much to look at and we needed to get to a campground. We had a long drive west towards a campsite at Amistad, a reservoir on the Rio Grande river. This took us through Uvalde and Del Rio, both
quite large towns. There was not much in between them other than gigantic ranches with cattle and goats, and the little town of Bracketville which has a replica of the Alamo. The replica was built for a Hollywood movie, and is now a theme park. Every so often it gets busy as someone else wants to make an Alamo movie and it’s really difficult at the real Alamo site to have Santa Ana’s troops firing their cannons from the Post Office building and to have his cavalry charging along Alamo Avenue and stopping at the traffic lights. The replica has the original layout at the time of the battle, and is probably more “authentic” than the original which was repaired after the battle and given a roof. However, we weren’t willing to pay for a day’s admission so we moved on.
Amistad is beyond Del Rio and we arrived there at sunset, and chose a back road that took us between ranches to an arm of the reservoir. Actually, as the road just ended in the water it almost took us into the reservoir, but there was just enough light to see the water, back up, and find a spot for the night. We’d seen 
some deer on the way in, and, from the noises, we could tell we were surrounded by ducks, unseen in the gloom.
Wednesday January 11th
It was a cold night almost down to freezing, but we had a sunny morning, and the ducks were happily quacking away by the time we got up. I climbed the hill to see where we were (water and birds everywhere), while Sandie collected agates from the shore line.
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