37) San Antonio Missions

Visited: Monday, April 4th, 2001

Like many who have been to San Antonio, I've visited the Alamo - but I'd never visited the other four missions, which collectively make up the San Antonio Missions NPS site. The largest, and only restored, mission is San Jose. The mission itself was very nice - save for the church, we we didn't get to see as it's being restored - but what really made the ranger tour for me was the grist mill. It's simply fascinating to see how the the mission inhabitants worked around their distance from the San Antonio river to still run a water wheel. And the ranger explained the phrase "keep your nose to the grindstone", as noticing if the stone is rotating too fast and burning the wheat. No idea if it's the actual origin of the phrase, but it's a fine story.

The other three missions are much less complete, but interesting in their own right. Both San Juan and Espada had multiple church sites, including an incomplete late attempt at a new site at San Juan. Espada also has a separate area to see one of the aqueducts which helped make up the advanced water system. It's an impressive sight - particularly for being over 250 years old. The final mission we visited was Conception, which is much closer to downtown San Antonio and as a result there's really little left save for the church. But the church is in _fantastic_ shape - it's all original, including some very impressive wall decorations.

The most fascinating aspect of our visit was the understanding we gained of how San Antonio came to be; the Alamo was an important step in the history of the city, but it's really the missions which brought together the population to eventually making for the town.

36) Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park

Visited: Friday, April 1st, 2011

It's interesting - the two first presidential sites we've visited, on our quest, are for Johnson and Johnson. And there are a number of parallels between the men; as often as I've heard the comparison between Lincoln's presidency and Kennedy's, I don't think I've ever heard the two Johnsons compared much.

The LBJ park is actually two separate areas, 14 miles apart. In Johnson City, there is the museum and the boyhood home. The museum is very nicely done, in what was once a hospital, with not one but two film showing regularly. The only thing I wish for was more on Lady Bird's life - but we didn't watch the second movie, focused on her, so I guess it's my own fault.

One reason we didn't watch the movie is that the tour of the boyhood home was starting. It's an interesting old home, which particularly helped me to understand how folks dealt with the Texas heat (nearly every room opened to the outside, so that a screen door could let a breeze through). The other striking feature was the small water tower in the backyard, which gave the Johnsons something resembling running water in the house.

We then proceeded to the ranch. The introduction movie was wonderful - it was film of Johnson showing a reporter around the ranch, which made for an ideal introduction. Well, save for the disappointment it caused that we didn't enter the ranch via the original "underwater road" entrance. There is a CD tour freely distributed (to be returned); we've had great luck with these (most recently in Acadia), so we took advantage of it. But because you have to loop around a landing strip, there's a lot of land with nothing much to talk about, so they added songs. The first I didn't recognize - an old Texas song, I believe - but the second was "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head", which I suspect I'll now forever more associate with the LBJ Ranch (just as "We Are Family" instantly brings to mind the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates). Being a working ranch, we had to wait patiently on crossing cows a couple of times, and when we got back to the start of the loop discovered a cow who decided to stand guard over its entrance.