San Antonio

Day 1:  San Antonio is about a 3.5-hour drive away, south-east of San Angelo.  It seemed like a rather long drive because the AC in the van is pretty much useless if the sun is out, and the driver's side window is broken.  Also, Paul was sleepy so I did the driving into San Antonio; there was a lot of traffic AND, as it turns out, Google Maps failed us.  We got lost trying to get to our hotel on Lackland Air Force Base.  Yes, we should've expected it since we got lost when we arrived at Goodfellow, but still.  We barely made it to the 8:00 pm session at the San Antonio Temple, which was another 40 minute drive through crazy highway obsessed San Antonio.  The temple was beautiful though, set up on a high hill, and we're definitely glad we made it.

Day 2:  SEA WORLD.

Sea World San Antonio has a program called Here's to the Heroes which offers free entrance to military members and their families once a year.  Score.  This was the main reason we came to San Antonio in the first place.  We stayed all day!

We went to the water park first thing.  They have awesome slides, a wave pool, and a lazy river.  It's probably one of our favorite parts of the park (besides the fact that we neglected to wear sun screen and are paying the price even days later.  ouch).  We also went on a few of the roller coaster rides (I love roller coasters).

I loved all of the animals!  We saw dolphins, penguins, puffins, sea lions, otters, alligators, turtles, frogs, sting rays, flamingos, sharks, whales, and all sorts of fish.  I like the flamingos a lot, and I think that the sea lions are super funny.  Paul really likes the penguins.

We went to two shows.  The Shamu Show (or as they call it "Believe") was pretty dull.  The trainers didn't go in the water at all, and didn't even touch the whales.  We think they must have changed the show quite a bit since a trainer in Orlando was killed by one of the whales a few months ago.  But yeah, the whales swam and jumped a little, but it wasn't really that great.  We didn't even get splashed.  The second show we went to was called Azul.  It featured a baluga whale, dolphins, and human divers.  We went to the last showing and thought it was really cool.  Much more entertaining than the other one.

Sea World was awesome.  I can't wait until next year so we can go again.

Day 3:  We spent Sunday in New Braunfels with Paul's Aunt and Uncle and cousins.  We went to church with them (at 1:00, yay) and stayed for dinner.  I found an unfinished puzzle while we were watching a movie and worked on that (I love puzzles).  They also had a cuddly little dog that really liked Paul.

Day 4:  On Labor Day we went downtown, first to the Alamo, and then to the river walk.

It was fun to just wander around downtown.  We both liked the Alamo (despite the fact that everyone we know says that it is lame), and the river walk.  We stopped for lunch at one of the restaurants along the river, and even bought a souvenir.  There was a quick storm while we were exploring the mall, and then we decided to head back.

Google Maps failed us once again on our way home.  This was a real bummer because it was unbearably hot in the car and we probably ended up driving an extra 30 minutes.  I think the only thing that kept us from complaining the whole time was our book on CD: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

We had a ton of fun on our trip, but I think now we both appreciate the smallness that is San Angelo.