San Antonio

I'm a week late in posting about this amazing trip but here goes. We took off from SeaTac early, 7:20 am and amazingly American Airlines was on time. What that meant was that we were treated to one of the most spectacular sunrise views of Mount Ranier. The pictures don't capture the awe of it all but it's the best I can do.

We stayed in a five star hotel, The Crowne Plaza with a great view and within walking distance of everywhere. We didn't get to go to the pool too much because we were so busy but the day we did, it was so windy that the lounge chairs were blowing into the pool right and left, a total of 4 ended up in the pool by the time we left. The hot tub was perfect though.

Although we had been to the Alamo before, we went again and it was still fun. We did not take the tour but they were giving discounted tours to all WSU fans wearing their colors, which of course we were. We walked around and found a Pat O"Brien's just across the street from the Alamo. This is a place we went to in New Orleans and had the best drink, a Hurricane, so we had to have one here. Needless to say, it entailed more than one. They had banners on their wall welcoming the Cougar Fans (yes, they also had ones welcoming the Notre Dame fans as well). We were going to go back and try to take one home but forgot.

The next day we found that there was a large German community about 25 miles north of San Antonio that was having a "Wurstfest" so we had to rent a car and head up there. We didn't want to spend a lot of money so decided to just rent a compact car, the cheapest we could get. But as it turned out, they were out of compacts so for just $10 more we got the only car they had available, a brand new, Volvo convertible sports car. It normally rents for three times what we paid. We were in heaven driving down the highway, top down, 75 degrees. Before we went to the Wurstfest we drove into the countryside to find a German town called Gruene and did some browsing there. Unfortunately, this caused us to miss the "biting of the Wurst" to kick of the festival but I guess you can't do everything. The festival was so much fun. We went into a hall that had the largest collection of beer bottles you can imagine. There was even a bottle of "Barry" beer. We ate, and drank (responsibly of course) and the overall favorite food was the Ham Hocks and Sauerkraut and of course, my favorite beer Spaten.

All this took us up to Game Day. There were a lot of Coug fans in San Antonio which was really great to see. It seemed like there were more than the Irish but obviously that was not the case. We did decide to attend the Texas Alumni Association pre-game rally and that turned out to be an excellent decision. For $30 each (it would have been $20 if we had pre-registered) we had unlimited access to all kinds of drinks among thousands of Cougar fans and believe me, we took advantage of it all! The WSU president, Elson Floyd was there and of course, so was Butch. We even met people my husband knew and were able to sit with them the whole time. Everything went well until I heard someone call our leader a Nazi Socialist and having had just enough to embolden me, it was on. Luckily, we were off to the game at that point.

While the game was a disappointment, although not unexpected, the trip was everything we wanted. What a great road trip.