The Adventures of Sunsette -- Texas Travels, Part II— Apr. 12

[Alliecat]

"We always seem so much braver than we ever are...."


"Here are some more of our Texas travels.  Apologies for some re-runs from the field dispatches in October, but we're just gonna paste what we wrote on Dal House here, cos there's like two of us left anyway    So here are those photos with some longer context.  Maybe someday there will be some more dolly friends here to read it.  We can hope."

"So, Mum had four things on her want-to-see list that she compiled in a big hurry and we got to see all of them.  Next up was Natural Bridge Caverns, a fabulous limestone wonderland with tours down to 180 feet below ground.  The caves go on beyond that to 230 feet.
"I am annoyed to say Scarlett and I never got out of the camera bag.  There were too many people on the first tour and just not time on the second one.  This is what it looked like.  I guess.  Because we didn't get to see it."










"This is what we got to see:  the entrance..."




"...and the limestone bridge that the place is named for."




"Next up was the Alamo, which we didn't get many pictures of us at, again."


"It was really crowded in front because everyone wants to take selfies here."



"Everyone says how small it looks in the middle of the city."



"The inside of the church, and at the end you can see where the wall at the top was broken down during the battle."



"In the museum, this was St. Joseph.  His arms are articulated but I guess he doesn't quite count as a doll..."



"We didn't know anything about the story, so we got a history lesson.  Apparently Phil Collins donated a lot of stuff in the museum, and he narrates the story around this diorama.  It's a little bit small for us -- we don't usually find things that are smaller than we-size -- but we couldn't pose here anyway cos it's all under glass."



"After we got kicked out at closing time.  They are really zealous about getting people out of there, and start shoo-ing about 20 minutes before."



"Mum was pretty tired and footsore at this point from schlepping the heavy camera bag around, so we had an abbreviated look at the very famous San Antonio Riverwalk."






"Don't these colourful critters look fun?  This was a district of artisan shops but by this time everything was closed and it was deserted."


"Next up: we went back to the Natural Bridge area because the same people own a wildlife ranch -- basically a drive-through safari.  Before you get to the safari part though, there is a collection of..."


"...dragons.  Yup, really a lot of them.  We think this part might still be in development, cos they're all just kinda sitting there and the boxes with the electronics are all ex-posed as are the bases.  It's a pretty dry area so maybe it's difficult to get plants established around them.  All the dragons have motion sensors and they move and roar at you when you pass."



"Also, there are dinosaurs.  They were pretty cool."



"Close to life-size?"



"Triceratops is Mum's favourite dinosaur."



"Yes, we did eventually drive through the wildlife part, and we saw tons of animals, like these oryx.  Some people reviewing the place complained that they didn't see much, but late in the afternoon everybody was active.  Many came right up to the car and we got a lot of reproachful stares because we didn't buy any food for them.
"We were the last car through and were all by ourselves for most of it, but we felt kinda rushed at the end by the guy on the ute following us and closing gates.  So Mum didn't get to sit and take pictures for long in each area, but it was well before closing time yet so we made dude wait while we got some!"



"Including -- squee -- this baby zebra!"



"These giraffes looked really, really bored.  We felt sorry for them.  We hope they get to rotate out to the meadow with the other giraffes."


"We told the story of the ring on the counter at the housesit..."


"Yeah.... it's funny NOW."


"To be continued!
"Thanks for reading.
"Love, Sunsette   "