Stan and Connie Spielbusch's Web Site

StanAndConnie.com

April 2001

San Antonio

April 8th, 2001

On our way to Florida, we wanted to stop and see some sights in San Antonio and Houston. With only 2 days to sight-see in each city, it's been a hectic time but we managed to squeeze in the main sights.

First in San Antonio, we visited the Alamo, the River Walk, The Buckhorn Saloon/Museum, the Mission Trail (4 missions of the 1700's), and the Botanical Gardens.

The Alamo, as a tourist attraction, is much smaller than I had imagined, both in physical size and quantity of exhibits. However the IMAX movie about it and the scale models of the famous battle make it pretty interesting and educational. Only the church building remains of the original mission complex, so here's the obligatory Alamo photo:

(Click photos to enlarge)

The Riverwalk was nice, but would have been much nicer on a cool day. We walked around it for quite a distance, and it was solid restaurants on both sides. They have boat tours, but we just watched them instead of riding them.

The Buckhorn Saloon/Museum was very interesting, in an odd sort of way. It mainly consists of stuffed animals, and the collection originally started when cowboys would bring in unusual deer horns and other oddities in exchange for beer. The present collection is massive, and also includes large collections from Africa, Asia, and Australia as well as from the Americas. On display are the horns of the largest longhorn steer, a 78-point buck, many "deformed" buck horns caused by hormone imbalances and deformities (see the 3-horned buck below), furniture made from horns, two-headed calves, lions, tigers, and bears (oh my). And then there's the horned rabbit (the "horns" are actually wood pieces that got stuck in its fur, causing the skin to grow around them).

The 4 missions consisted of the original old church buildings, which are operating Catholic churches owned by the church, even though the property is a national park and owned by the government. Each mission was designed as a community (each about like a city block in size), and they were successful in getting the local primitive peoples to live and work within their walls as well as convert them to Christianity. The priests appear to still wear the brown robes as they did 200 years ago (we caught one walking to the rectory).

The Botanical Gardens had lots of flowers, of course. Everybody has seen flowers, and it was too humid out to really enjoy it, even though it was really pretty good.

Houston

April 9th, 2001

The first thing to say about Houston is that the traffic is really really bad, even on weekends. Back in San Antonio there was a "How to be a Texan" poster that listed "Never Drive in Houston" as one of the ways to survive in Texas. Now we believe it. (If any Houstonians are reading this, you know I'm talking about the other drivers, not you! ;-)

There are a lot of museums in Houston, and of course the NASA Space Center, and nearby Galveston has a load of its own attractions. But with only 2 days, we had to limit it to the Space Center (a while day affair) and the Houston Museum of Natural Science (another whole-day affair, and we only saw about half of it). Both of course were my choices, Connie just went along.

Thank goodness we saw the museum on Sunday, since it was in the middle of downtown. Not that the crazy drivers weren't out, but there were less of them. This is one huge museum, and besides the main exhibit halls it has a separate (well, charged separately) butterfly exhibit, IMAX theater with 3 different movies, and a traveling exhibit of the Forbidden City in China. The main exhibit halls included a fantastic mineral collection and minerology history exhibit, a section on searching for energy, dinosaurs (or course), fossils, egyptian artifacts, seashells, worldwide wildlife (more stuffed animals) and more -- and that's only 2 out of 4 floors, we were too exhausted to find out what's on the other 2 floors.

Anyway, my main reason for going was the mineral exhibit since I read about it, and I wasn't disappointed -- except when I ran out of batteries for my camera! Luckily I had already gotten photos of some butterflies and bugs before that. Anyway, here are a couple nice examples.

I made a screen saver with 42 great mineral photos from the exhibit -- check it out here!

The NASA Space Center consists of several movies and presentations, a tram ride to see some big rockets (the Saturn V rocket that would have been used for Apollo 18 if the program had not been cancelled by NASA), a tour of mission control and the astronaut training center, and a variety of exhibits and hands-on displays.

During the visit it felt like an amusement park with a lot of fake props, but then it started to sink in -- of course much of the training facility is made up of "fake" props to train on, they wouldn't use a whole space shuttle, space station module, or satellites because they're too expensive. The mockups were realistic enough for training (with many of the real operating parts), and you just have to realize that you're looking at the actual training tools of real astronauts. This is real life, not movie special effects.

Likewise the Saturn V rocket, while perfectly real and originally usable, probably seemed fake because it wasn't used -- well, it would have been burned up in the atmosphere if it had been used! Thankfully they do have real Apollo and Gemini space capsules on display, as well as some moon rocks, lots of space suits and tools actually used in space, and other cool stuff like the toilet used in the space shuttle (well, I don't know if it was actually "used"...).

Here is a section of the space station (the Russian part) in the training center. You can also see part of a space shuttle trainer:

Here's the toilet, what I like to call the "Oh Gee Whiz" (as in "Zero-G..."). See if you can figure out what the different parts are used for:

The Florida Keys

April 15th-29th, 2001

As the driver of the motorhome, I was a little apprehensive about going to the Keys because I had images in my mind of a 100-mile long, narrow 2-lane bridge high above the water. Well, it turns out that there's nothing like that (any more). Some of the bridges on I-10 in Louisiana were much worse than anything in the Keys. The roads are plenty wide, often with good shoulders, and for most of the road you wouldn't even know you're in the keys because it's on wooded land. Most bridges are far less than a mile long and not very narrow. One bridge stands out, the 7-mile bridge. In the photo below you can see as we cross the bridge, coming up to a raised portion which allows boat traffic through. To the right you see the old bridge (which was narrow), with a section missing. That section was blown up in the movie "True Lies", and now allows tall boats to pass through.

(Click photos to enlarge)

The other thing we were worried about was the weather -- we imagined it being hot and sticky, so we had only planned to stay 1 week. Well, it was so nice when we arrived that we immediately extended our stay to 2 weeks! The ocean breezes keep it feeling relatively cool, and a cold front and occasional clouds helped keep it cool and provided terrific sunrises and sunsets.

We stayed at an RV park about 10 miles from Key West, so we could easily visit the tourist areas there. The first thing we did was ride the Conch Train, which is a tram-type ride around Key West with a narrated tour. It was very informative, and allowed us to learn about most of the attractions and decide what we wanted to go back and tour. Whether you're short on time and just want an overview or you're staying awhile and plan to see everything you can, this tour is a great way to start.

We went back to Key West on other days and started touring museums and attractions.

The Ripley's Believe It Or Not is similar to the others (like the one we toured in Branson). It also has some local oddities and a large collection of deep-sea diving helmets, including some that were modified for movies like "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." What can I say, I like oddities.

The Shipwreck Historeum is an interesting attraction. It's a museum about the shipwrecks and the "salvage" business that made Key West the richest city in the country at one time. The unusual part is that you are guided through sections by live actors as though you're being recruited for a wrecker (salvage) crew. You can also climb to the top of the watchtower and see a great view of the keys (and watch for wrecks). I don't recall how high it is, but there was a strong wind blowing so it seemed REALLY high.

Another good museum is the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum (unfortunately no photos are allowed inside). It contains samples of the multi-million-dollar treasure from the Atocha and other shipwrecks. A key attraction is one of the gold bars that you can handle and see how heavy it is. It's about a foot long and about 1" square, and seemed over 10 pounds. If you have about $20,000 to spare, you can buy actual gold coins from the wreck, as well as emeralds, silver pieces, and other trinkets.

The Key West Aquarium is small, but has some interesting features. The "touch tank" has conchs, hermit crabs and sea cucumbers that you can pick up. In outdoor pool contains a turtle and several large fish and sharks, an ocean pen has a large sawfish and shark, and several indoor aquariums contain reef life and other fish like a barracuda, grouper, yellowtail snapper (yum yum!), and blow fish. But the best part was the indoor pool with several sharks and stingrays. Every few hours you can watch the guides feed them, right out of their hands. It looks like the guides would be missing a few fingers by now, but I guess they know what they're doing. The sharks come out of the water a little to chomp on the fish in the guide's hand. It got real close to his fingers several times. But the fun part was the stingrays -- they would swim (flap their "wings") at the edge of the pool and come almost completely out of the water to get to the food. I've never seen one climb a wall like that (see the photo). They also brought a baby shark out of the pool and let everybody pet it.

Other must-do's include the "Southernmost Point" monument and the sunset festival at Mallory Square. Vendors and entertainers gather at the square each day for sunset. Here you see a juggler on a high-wire with knives. No net.

We visited other museums on Key West too, like the Flagler Railroad Museum, Custom House, Hemmingway's home, The Little Whitehouse (Harry S. Truman museum), and the Lighthouse Museum. No need to swamp you with photos, though, since they weren't all that unique. We learned some interesting things about Hemmingway and Truman, though.

Another nearby attraction is the Dolphin Research Center on Marathon Key. Unlike most places that have Dolphin shows, this is an active research center. It was also the home of Flipper. If you want to, you can take a 2-hour course and then swim and do tricks with the Dolphins, or you can stay for a week-long intensive research session. We just enjoyed the dolphins (at least 10 are there for you to see, including a couple newborn babies) and the sea lions. Here you can see a couple dolphins in their famous jumps, and two mothers with their babies swimming together.

Finally there's the wildlife on Big Pine Key. Unique to this area are the Key Deer, a species that evolved here. They are much smaller than normal deer -- these are full-grown but only about 3 feet tall. They are very tame and they are endangered, partly because they're too tame. They casually walk onto the highway, unafraid of cars. Tourists feed them which encourages this reckless behavior. Here you see two deer cleaning grass off of each others' mouth. How cute.

Seagulls and other birds are ever-present.

You can also find wild alligators, iguanas, and other critters at Blue Hole. This iguana was at least 2 feet long and sitting in a tree. It didn't seem to mind me getting close for a picture (well, several pictures), it just kept looking straight at me so I couldn't get a side-shot of it head. The young alligator was about 4 feet long, and I took this from a safe deck over the water. Adult gators were spotted further out in the lake.

Our friends who live on Big Pine Key helped with our sightseeing, and we had a great time visiting with them. They know where the wildlife can be found, and (more importantly) where good food can be found. Lots of fresh seafood is served at lots of great restaurants on Key West and the other keys. We also tried Cuban food which was very good, especially the fried plantains (bananas). For seafood and more, we highly recommend the restaurant at the Hyatt in Key West, at Simonton and Front Street. The food was great and the desserts were masterpieces. Here's a frozen chocolate cake dessert with psitaccio ice cream in the middle, and a bread pudding that looks like a "desserted" island.

Thank you for visiting our travel site. Please visit our other sites too:

Campground Master -- A tracking program for your campground or inn. Easy to use and learn, but modern and powerful. One of the most inexpensive systems, great for small campgrounds. Designed by campground owners and full-time RVers.

MysteryPhotos -- Every week a new photo is shown, which may be a close-up of something, or a section of a common object or sight. Guess what it is and you might win a prize. Lots of fun for the whole family! Free screensaver and wallpaper too.

Awesome Screen Savers -- Cool photographic screen savers of the highest quality, for Windows PC's. Download FREE Lite versions of them all. Some are created with photos from our travels, some are awesome photos from NASA. (Contact me to have a screen saver made with your own photos!)

Cottonwood Software -- My shareware business site, currently featuring File-Ex 98: a Windows 95/98 dialog enhancement tool. Great for people who work with a lot of files.

Free -n- Cool -- Tons of Freebies, Giveaways, and Cool Sites -- all in one! You'll find a large selection of free samples you can get mailed to you, free games, screen savers, internet services, etc., plus hundreds of contests of all types, and a unique "intensely cool sites" list.