Scott's View - San Antonio, Texas
Not everything goes as you hope it will.
I had been to San Antonio with Deb a few years before and we had a great time. We were especially impressed by the Riverwalk, a great party district with plenty of cool bars and restaurants. So I was excited about making a stop there on the Baseball Trip, since Ron had never been there. I could play "host" and show him all the cool places around town.
The drive from Austin to San Antonio was the shortest one of the entire trip, and we took advantage of that fact by getting a good night's sleep and arriving in town refreshed and ready for anything. After checking into the '6' shortly after noon, we decided to take a walk downtown to see the Alamo. The Motel 6 brochure read "Alamo - 1 mi.", so we started hoofing it. Well, whoever wrote that brochure must have been thinking of some other Alamo, because the one we were looking for was considerably more than a mile away, and the 100 degree heat wasn't making for a very pleasant walk. Eventually we got there, tired and sweaty, and made our way in. I suggested we watch a short film on the history of the Alamo in a small theatre adjacent to the museum. From my last visit, I remembered an entertaining and informative presentation which truly brought the story of Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett and the rest of the brave soldiers to life. Unfortunately, it had been replaced with a dull, sterile account of the famous battle which bored us more than enlightened us. At least the theatre was air-conditioned.
After getting our fill of history, I suggested we check out the Riverwalk before heading back to the motel. It was still early in the day, so not much was going on, but we did spot some promising places to party later in the evening. Now, though, we had to start back in order to make it to the game on time.
Nelson Wolff Municipal Stadium is located on the southwest corner of town, about 10 miles from the motel. After an easy drive there, we found ourselves among the crowd filing in for the evening's contest. Wolff was built in 1994, and follows the "less is more" philosophy of many stadiums from the early to mid '90s. It's nice enough, and a comfortable place to watch a game, but there's just no real character to it. Save for the Alamo-shaped scoreboard, you might not even know what state you're in.
Still, the awful heat of the day was beginning to give way to a cool evening breeze, and with the help of a few cold beers, nine innings flew right by, and the Riverwalk awaited.
Unfortunately, though, the easy drive to the park turned into a near-nightmare on the way back. I foolishly chose a non-interstate route back to town, but soon realized that, contrary to Rand McNally's opinion, the road did not go through to the other side of town. We decided to find our way back to the highway to get downtown, and soon enough, a sign reading "to I-10" pointed the way. Ah, but this was Texas. Apparently, the system of entering and exiting the interstates in the state of Texas was designed by a team of chimpanzees on crack. "To I-10" turned out to be a road leading to a ramp leading to a frontage road leading to another ramp leading to another frontage road leading to a ... dead end! If there was actually a way to get on I-10 among all this mess, we certainly missed it.
Somehow, we eventually found our way back to the motel and hiked down to the Riverwalk. It was just before midnight -- not too late to find a good place to hang out on a Thursday night, right? Wrong! The sidewalks of San Antonio were all but rolled up, as we walked past window after window revealing upside-down chairs stacked on tables. Finally we happened upon (the aptly named) Dick's Last Resort, which was still open. We spent the next half hour as 2 of about 10 people listening to a bad house band mutilate some good rock & roll songs before deciding to give up and call it a night.
It wasn't a bad day, really, but quite the anticlimax to one of the most-anticipated stops on the trip. Just goes to show that you never know how the day's going to turn out!