Texas Highways to San Antonio

After the brief stay in Houston, we got on the road this morning for the 200 mile drive to San Antonio. Yesterday, when we hit the Texas border and saw the mile marker at 850 miles, it gave us a new appreciation of the breadth of Texas.

The land west of Houston is flat and scrubby. There are plenty of cattle ranches. About 75 miles east of San Antonio, we took a northern route to Lockhart, TX, home of the famous Black’s Texas Barbeque. Lockhart is an old Texas town with an old, ornate courthouse in the center of the square. Black’s is downtown and we weren’t the earliest for lunch at 11:30 AM. The lunch special includes two sides and either beef “briskit” (sic); chicken; pork; or sausage for $4.95. The restaurant has been in the Black family since 1932. It was great, but Texas barbeque is different in a couple of ways. It is heavily smoked and not sauced. (If you have ever eaten at Curtis’ Outdoor Barbeque in Putney, VT…it is vastly different from Texas barbeque). Also, sausage is often offered as a selection. I read somewhere that Texas barbeque is an outgrowth of the Eastern Europeans who brought the technique here. We enjoyed it immensely. Thanks, Ernie for suggesting it!

The diversion from Interstate 10 was welcome. Lockhart is in Texas Hill Country, near San Marcos where LBJ went to college and was a school teacher. The rolling hills are quite different from flat terrain outside of Houston. If you ever read The Path to Power by Caro, the description of the Hill Country is very vivid.

We got into San Antonio and checked into our hotel which is the La Mansion del Rio. I knew that the Society of Mary (the Marianists who founded the University of Dayton) had a college here called St. Mary’s, but I didn’t realize that the site of this historic hotel was also the site of their first boy’s school. That was neat to learn. (Go Flyers, again)

We are on the Riverwalk and we took a stroll. There are no guard rails along the walk. There are also many Margarita establishments. I can only imagine the number of people who end up in the drink after a drink.

We are looking forward to a good Tex Mex dinner tonight. Saw the Alamo briefly, but will go into that tomorrow. (Is there a basement in the Alamo? Only Pee Wee Herman knows for sure.)