Remember the Alamo!

I spent Sunday and Monday in San Antonio, TX. It was quite a surprise to see how green it is there. From the air you can hardly see the buildings for all the trees!

I didn't realize the Alamo is in San Antonio. We got there 5 minutes before it closed and squeaked inside.





Out back is this huge oak tree.














From the Alamo, we walked down to the Riverwalk. It's actually a natural river that circles the city. It used to flood so in the 1920's the city started a project to control the river. They did a beautiful job! It doesn't even look real. It looks like Disneyland. It's a tourist attraction. It reminded us of Pirates of the Carribbean in some places. There are lots of shops and restaurants and waterfalls.























After a decadent dinner at The Palms (which I understand is famous), we took a boat ride.
Along the beautiful riverwalk we passed this mall, which our guide told us is the only mall in America with a river running through it.
This is a yellow crowned night heron, a Texas bird that swallows crayfish and spits out the claws. There were also tons of big black birds that looked like crows but sounded sweeter but very very loud. When we walked out of the restaurant, we thought there must be amplifiers in the trees playing bird sounds.
While we were on the boat ride, we had an encounter with one of those copious numbers of loud black birds. Splat! Got three of us! Fortunately, we had 5 Star accommodations to return to for the clean up!











It was amazing to be treated so well in this economy!

A Grad Student's Apartment

Last weekend, after the Richard Nixon Library
visit, I drove out to visit Joseph at UCLA.
The first place he took me to was to visit Dad.
I haven't been to the cemetery since the funeral
in 1974. Apparently, Dad's grave is within eye
sight of Joseph's apartment. Unfortunately, the
guard closed the gate just as we walked up.





I visited the site of much studying and calculations of the particle physics type.









Then we went for a very long walk around his "neighborhood."

Unfortunately, I left my camera in the car when we visited the UCLA campus and his office. "Next time," he grinned. Yeah, right!

The Nixon Library

Last Saturday I went to a nursing seminar. It was held at the Richard Nixon library in Yorba Linda. Now I was never a Nixon fan, but I've never been to a presidential library before either, so I was curious.










We ate in the ballroom and toured "Army One," the helicopter version of "Airforce One." It was put into service by JFK and served 4 Presidents. Somehow Nixon ended up with it.
This is the house Nixon was born in. The doctor came to the house to deliver him. His dad built this house from a kit. Pretty nice for a kit house! It was about 1000 square feet including the second story which consisted of one bedroom with just enough room for 2 beds touching.

The tiny master bedroom where Nixon was born. His mother was a college graduate and his dad dropped out of grammer school. What a mismatch. The picture frames over the bed were handmade by the future president himself!
This is the table that Nixon learned his debating skills with his 4 brothers and his dad.
They had an ice box. Mom and Aunt Dot always talk about their ice box.
Nixon and his wife are buried on the property. I didn't know that. I thought the Presidents all end up in the Arlington Cemetary.
The Presidential Limo.
All in all, it was worth the visit.

April Birthdays Duris style