Traveling Texas

Two weeks are now complete. Time flies.  After some deliberation we decided to head a little farther south this weekend, towards Goliad State Park.  Lots of history in that area, plus there’s a paddle trail on the San Antonio River that looked interesting.

So we were on the road by 9am and made our first stop just two miles from the camp, at the Donut Palace.  Can’t leave a good donut store unpatronized.  We came away with snacks for later on in the morning.

In Port Lavaca, we happened upon a H.E.B. grocery store and just had to stop.  We picked up a couple more basketball-sized grapefruits (the receipt calls them Pummelos) and also a package of Southwest flour tortillas, along with some other groceries.  There were flour tortillas and Southwest flour tortillas and a few other types of tortillas, all made by hand in-house.  Kind of a specialty here.  We decided to try the Southwest ones as they appear to be spiced up a bit.

When we arrived at Goliad State Park we used a couple of these to roll up some smoked chicken, bacon and cheese into sort-of a quesadilla and heated it on the panini maker.  Add a little cherry salsa and it was a fantastic lunch.

Today is the warmest day of the weekend, reaching a high of 53 degrees, so we wanted to get some kayaking in.  The state park is a take-out point for a paddle trail on the San Antonio River.  We drove to the 57th Street bridge, a put-in spot just under seven miles up the river and made it on to the water at just after 1pm.  Must be that most Texans prefer warmer weather as we were the only ones on the river.  Very nice river, no big obstructions, decent current, very peaceful.  We did the 6.8 miles in about two hours.

We are camping here at the State Park overnight.  When we got to our site, we had a few more tortillas, this time stuffed with pulled pork, sautéed onions, and BBQ sauce.  Another great variation on the theme.

Tomorrow we’ll probably explore some of the Spanish missions and other history of this area before heading back to the camp in the evening. We were just a bit late getting back from kayaking to see the mission on the State Park property.  The Mission Espíritu Santo is a prominent structure, a reconstructed version of the 1749 mission.  It was one of the most successful missions in Texas.  One of the things the people in the mission did is to keep cattle and this mission is considered the birthplace of cattle ranching.  We’ll probably learn some more fun facts tomorrow.

Photo Credit: National Park Service Web Site