My Kick-Ass Adventures!

I am itching for a biggish adventure. After visiting with my niece, I would love to go visit her in Memphis, as well as other family & friends in points south. A big adventure like that will take some planning and preparations. In the meantime, Mr. Wren & I decided to plan a smaller adventure for the Spring – a visit to Montana, where we can revisit our favorite places, see friends, and scope out possible homes.

With Mr. Wren working on my weekends and the ground covered in many feet of snow, I have not managed any adventures.

I think I need to figure out a way to have an adventure under these conditions…or start planning for a future adventure that I can look forward to.

Well, we have got a lot of snow here, that’s for sure. Yesterday, Mr. Wren gave me a pair of snow shoes! I am very excited to try them out, and today we are going to take Becca & Elbee snow shoeing. I think we will use one of the same trails that we hike in the summer. It will be fun to see how it looks all dressed in white.

I am planning on this being just the first of many snowshoeing adventures!

We also had a good hike in one of the wilderness areas (the wilderness areas in San Antonio seem heavily used to me, so I’m not sure about the accuracy of calling them by that name, but anyway…) And we spent a good bit of time finding dental help for Mr. Wren, who cracked a tooth…ouch!

I saw this big poster of Jim Morrison overlooking the public square at the Alamo, and liked that someone had the sense of humor to post it.

Of course, we also visited the Alamo in San Antonio, which is maybe not really a massacre site, although it is presented as one. Anyway, it is a good photo opp.

(Also third famous massacre site visit).

In San Antonio, we visited the San Antonio Missions National Park. That was pretty interesting in that is is a multi-site national park. There are four missions, built by Spanish invaders. You can drive to each one, or you can take a 9-mile walking/biking trail.

Here is a shot of one of the missions. I thought it was interesting that all of the historical information presented referred to the native American workers, ignoring the fact that these workers were actually slaves.

In Houston, we also visited the weather museum, which was kind of meh, and the Art Car Museum, which was just fantastic. The art museum featured a juried show of art based on the theme, “Good Gulf.” Just about all of the art in the Good Gulf show involved political and personal statements about the recent oil rig disaster.

They Discovery Park had several art cars installed as temporary sculptures. Very cool! Here’s a detail shot of one of them.

We also visited the Houston Discovery Park. This is a pretty cool gathering place, where concerts and classes are held, and there are lots of things to do. One thing that I liked about Houston was how ironically socialistic it is! I always think of Houston as a seat of conservative capitalism, yet the city really seems to be designed with quality of life for everyone in mind, and it has loads of things that cost nothing to enjoy, such as the Discovery Park.

Here is a picture of a very cool interactive water feature. The fountains change frequently, and children are encouraged to play in them.

of the gigantic water sculpture…