We spent our last morning in San Antonio visiting another of the missions, San Jose. This mission has been rebuilt to provide an accurate representation of what it was like in 1720. We had a very knowledgeable guide and it was fascinating to understand how the missions worked, and why. We then spent the afternoon at some famous caverns outside San Antonio. These are fabulous caverns in the limestone created over millennia, with amazing formations throughout. A great day. We topped off with a combination of a couple of beers in our new favourite bar, and sitting on the balcony of the Airbnb with a glass of wine watching the river below 🙂. San Antonio is a top place.

We left the following day and travelled to Fort Worth. Other than visiting more Americana for Gem (see photos 😄) we decided to visit the site of the Branch Davidians siege near Waco (aka Waco Siege 1993). The original buildings are long gone (destroyed in the siege) but the site is still owned by members of the religion, and we had a very interesting discussion with one of them whose husband left when David Koresh took over. Her/their interpretation of what happened is of course very different than what was reported. There is no way to know what is right or wrong, but clearly both sides did very wrong things. It was interesting that the lady we were speaking too had the same view.

Fort Worth is called “Cowtown”. It was the centre of livestock trading in Texas for a long, long time. The Stockyards is where this all took place. Today it is a tourist location but, it does have some history and was worth visiting, After visiting it during the day we then went back to watch a genuine Rodeo. The Cowtown Coliseum is an original Rodeo location from 100+ years ago. What is a Rodeo like……hmmmmm, difficult to explain. It is everything we have seen on TV. Texans consider it a sport, and it is not dissimilar to watching Baseball or Ice Hockey in terms of the entertainment and general approach. There are leagues and different parts of the Rodeo offer different points. To understand it we think you need to grow up around it. Are we glad we went, yes, would we go again, no.

We spent today in Dallas. Having got the train over there we headed for the JFK museum, the grassy knoll and all that was associated with JFKs assassination. It is very interesting to be standing in the same place as that which you see on the grainy footage from 1963 that we have all seen at TV. The museum is excellent. The location from where Oswald was supposed to have fired is maintained and you can see it. The impact of what happened to American society is clear. Did Oswald do it? Some evidence appears conclusive, some evidence appears contradictory. Was anybody else involved? Quite possibly.

Otherwise Dallas is, frankly, a little dull. So, we headed back and meet another lovely person at a local brewery. As we have said before, American people are, in the main, genuinely friendly and interested. They do no appear to reflect their representatives!

As we type we have just finished sitting on the balcony with a glass of wine watching the sun go down over Fort Worth. Tomorrow we head for Oaklahome city, hopefully via a wildlife refuge that has Bison amongst many other things.