San Antonio, Monday 8-April

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Eclipse day! We were watching the chance of clouds continuing to rise, but as long as it wasn’t raining, we would still try to take a look. In the afternoon, we saw the Alamo and walked a bit on the San Antonio River Walk.

Eclipse

The chance to see a total solar eclipse was what sparked the idea for this trip, and the day had come. The forecasts were for clouds, but we saw reports of things clearing for totality. After we woke, the sun was bright enough to cast shadows in the living room now and then.

At the time the eclipse was supposed to start, we saw total cloud cover, but we all went outside as totality neared. We noticed the sky was darker, and then as totality approached, we started seeing a sliver of the sun. Soon after, everything was getting darker, porch lights turned on, and the next thing we knew, it felt like night.

When totality was over, the sky seemed to brighten very quickly, but we still couldn't see the sun. It wasn't until a bit later that we saw it again.

Overall, while we didn't see the sun for most of the time, it almost felt like a game to see if we could get peeks of the sun, and experiencing everything going from light to dark to light very quickly was memorable.

We hung around the house for a little more, hoping that any post-eclipse traffic would subside. The state was pretty serious about trying to ease traffic; on the drive from Houston, the electronic boards were recommending people arrive early, stay in one place, and then hang around instead of leaving right away. We also saw signs telling people to not pull over on the side of the road to watch the eclipse. All that traffic management seemed to help, as we didn't see any congestion when we were out (but we stayed put for quite a while before and after).

The Alamo

Once we thought enough time had passed for traffic to die down, we drove down to take a look at The Alamo. There had been some light sprinkles, but not enough for us to worry about being outside. After looking at the outside, we went inside the church to take a look there. Once we were done, we went outside to take a look at the live oak which has been there for over a century.

San Antonio River Walk

After leaving The Alamo, we walked a few blocks to follow the San Antonio River Walk for a bit. We did most of the inner loop, then took one of the branches to see the Nueva Street Dam to the west. After working our way back, we stopped at a place to eat. We also chose to make that meal Melody's birthday dinner, but we didn't sing at the restaurant. We did turn down a song by some mariachi singers. Even if we had them sing, it would have been pretty loud inside; it was already pretty loud when they were singing outside.

After dinner, we drove to a grocery store to get more supplies. We also picked up a cake to have back at the house, which gave us a chance to sing Happy Birthday to Melody.