2019-01-29 Tuesday Port Aransas TX to Kerrville TX

Today we left Port Aransas and headed toward San Antonio. Another long drive down the length of the island checking out all the public Texas beaches to the south and eventually turning inland and heading north.
We saw all the huge chemical plants here making who knows what. Lots of "man camps" which are small modular housing units with pickups parked outside each one. I am guessing you make good money moving down here and working your butt off. We saw signs for jobs so they must be looking for more help.
We drove by Corpus Christi which was not so spectacular looking, lots of chain stuff everywhere, billboards, etc, but to be fair, we did not drive into Corpus so we will call it a draw.
The big excitement today was going on the plant tour at the Toyota Tundra and Tacoma plant outside San Antonio. I went to their plant in Georgetown

KY which was wonderful a couple of years back. Toyota does what's called "Lean Manufacturing" and they do it as well as anyone in the world. I had originally made a reservation for Weds but we are ahead of schedule and also want to stop at Big Bend National Park (now that the parks are open again..). So I called this morning and they said they could get us in at noon today. We had just enough time to make it there by noon so we let "Lead Foot Deb" drive and got there with a half hour to spare.
Awesome tour. These guys employ 3000 people and produce about 500 trucks every 8 hour shift. Two shifts a day and 5 days a week. I saw a board that showed they had made 23,000 Tundras or Tacomas in the last 30 days. The employees all are dressed neatly, nobody looks stressed

out, and they all seem pretty darned happy there. These plants are like roller coaster rides for engineers. Awesome, awesome, awesome. We did the tour with a school bus full of 7th graders who had to give up their cell phones (or else!!). So it was Deb and I, another couple from NJ and about 40 7th graders. The kids did great and nobody had to escorted out.
The it was on to San Antonio to see the Japanese Tea Garden which the NJ folks had said we had to see. It was built in 1914 or so by a guy that made Portland cement and gave it to the city as a gift. When WW2 came along they re-named it the Chinese Tea Garden (remember that WW2 Japanese internment camp thing..) but they changed the name back to Japanese Tea Garden in the 70's.
After the Tea Garden it was on to the Alamo. This Mexico-Texas-USA thing is really confusing. Mexico was declaring its independence from Spain, and invited Americans to become Mexican citizens. Americans got confused with the Mexican civil war thing going on and decided to declare their

independence from Mexico, and the US was upset and also got into the act. So big mess over 50 years or so. If you controlled the Alamo, you controlled Texas, so the Alamo changed hands several times between Spain, Mexico and Texas. I need to find a good documentary to figure this out.
Chatted with the reenactors who kind of cleared it up, but not really. Mexico has its own version of what happened. So Texas was a republic for 10 years or so before it became a state.
Next up was the famous San Antonio River Walk. This is cool. It looks like in the 1940's, they decided to make a river in a U shape off the existing river using some streets in town. It is the

coolest thing. It's like what I imagine Venice is like with a small river running past shops and stores and restaurants. But done beautifully with lights and stone works and lots of trees and plants. A must see.
We stopped for coffee and tea to warm up (50's today) and decided to head west a little to get out of the city before stopping for the night. Since Toyota got us in a day early, we decided we could make it (we hope) to Big Bend Park on the way to Arizona. So here we are an hour west of San Antonio where we found a cute little city with a nice (and cheap) motel and dinner in a restored train station followed by coconut cream pie (my first on the trip) at another local place (Billie Genes). This morning seems like a week ago..