Day 7 - Spring Vacation!

Friday - March 6

We enjoyed a lazy start to our day today and after doing our little driving tour around Kerrville we headed east toward San Antonio.  Our plan was to try another "Taco" from one of the locations on my Texas Monthly magazine article list "63 Tacos You Must Eat Before You Die".  We timed it so that we entered San Antonio after the morning traffic rush was over.....remember the HemisFair Tower...from the 1968 World's Fair...it still towers over downtown...

and enjoyed the drive thru some nice older neighborhoods just north of downtown to "Taco Taco" , a small but very busy neighborhood café on E. Hildebrand that is only open for breakfast and lunch, 7:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.  Since we arrived there just before 11:00 a.m. we ordered breakfast tacos...made on very large flour tortillas and filled with meat, cheese, onions, and everything good!  So yummee!

We made our way back to I-10, out the eastern side of San Antonio, then picking up U.S. Hwy. 90 toward Seguin.  Seguin is one of the oldest towns in Texas, founded in 1838 by a group of Texas Rangers and named in honor of Juan N. Seguin, a distinguished Mexican-Texan.  We wanted to see the "World's Largest Pecan", a concrete statue on the courthouse lawn that pays homage to a valuable local crop. 

                    Seguin's art deco courthouse....

What a gorgeous sunny day today!  Still just a little cool with a slight breeze blowing as we made our way to Gonzales to visit the Gonzales Memorial Museum....

 ....which is fronted by this serene reflecting pool.

The museum was closed today for a special function so we meandered about the grounds surrounding the Memorial.

Gonzales is know as the "Lexington of Texas" because the first skirmish of the Texas Revolution was fought here.  In 1835, as political unrest grew in colonial Texas, Mexican soldiers came to retrieve a six-pound cannon given to the town for frontier defense.  Colonists resisted, and waving a flag that read "Come and Take It", they turned the cannon on the soldiers---firing the first shot in the fight for Texas independence.

....And, as they say, "the rest is history"!

 The museum grounds are very well manicured and has a couple other historical buildings.  The Eggleston House is a carefully restored log house, originally built in 1848 and furnished with antiques to depict Texas pioneer life.

There is so much history in and around Gonzales.  What a striking Gonzales County courthouse silhouetted against a cobalt blue sky!

We then continued our drive eastward on U.S. Hwy. 90, next stop a few minutes away in Shiner, Texas which was founded as a railroad stop in 1887 when the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad was built, and was named for the town-site donor, H.B. Shiner, owner and founder of the K. Spoetzl Brewery, still in operation today, still utilizing the original old historical building.  Due to all the construction/expansion the brewery was only offering an abbreviated tour today.

I love this sign....much better than a simple "No Parking " sign that some folks tend to park in front of anyway.

Such beautiful architecture in this old church in Shiner!

Next, it was on to Halletsville, situated on the Lavaca River, equidistant from Houston and San Antonio.  The Lavaca County Courthouse built in 1899, was modeled after the county courthouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Oh boy, this brings back memories!  How many years since we have seen signs like this?  The sign was still up but this business looked closed long ago!

In Hallettsville, we turned north on U.S. Hwy. 77, and made it as far as Schulenburg (just a few miles!) as the sun was setting, a beautiful end to another great day of seeing sights in Texas that we had never seen before.

Booked a room here at the Holiday Inn Express for the night.

We'll see what we find to explore tomorrow...day 8 of our Spring Vacation!