Travel Day

Travel day today, from Corpus Christi to Austin. When I turned on the GPS this morning, it wanted to run us through San Antonio on I-37. Been there and done that, so I found an alternative route that took us in part along Highway 183/77A, and  took us past a curious site memorializing the massacre of Colonel James W. Fannin and about 350 of his Texan revolutionaries. As an American historian I thought I had heard of Fannin, so we stopped. Next to it was the Presidio La Bahia, an early 18^th century Spanish fortress. The chapel structure is largely original and the surrounding buildings were painstakingly restored from original plans in the 1960s and is regarded as one of "the finest examples of Spanish ecclesiastical building on the North American continent.”

Texans claim to have lived under nine flags, here they are. Nonetheless, don't ask me what they are. Several are differing versions of the Texas Republic and there are two different French flags in there. I dunno.

The statue in the niche above the door was crafted by Lincoln Borglum, now you know.

By the time we finished there it was mid-day and we were looking for lunch, which led us to the nearby town of Goliad and The Hanging Tree Restaurant. All I can say is that The Hanging Tree is one of those downhome local restaurants that make you proud to be an American and elicited a 5-star Yelp! review from me. If you’re within 100 miles don’t pass it up, especially the Chipotle burger and homemade potato chips. It will be tough, but leave room for a piece of bourbon pecan pie. It helps if you’ve not eaten for the previous two days. We’ll be good through Thursday.

From there we headed up to Austin with just a brief stop to check out the Lockhart City Hall. It seems like these towns, like those we saw so often when we were living in the midwest, competed to see who could build the most outrageous city hall. Lockhart wins. This structure would have driven King Ludwig of Bavaria mad, oh wait . . .