Texas - Part 3

San Antonio - Day 2

Our second day in San Antonio started an hour or two later than usual, giving us some welcome extra rest time. After enjoying another excellent hotel breakfast buffet we headed to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. Near the entrance we encountered this colorful rabbit sculpture.

Soon, equipped with a site map, we set out to explore the grounds. This panorama looks out over part of the grounds towards the rose garden.

Notice the thickly clouded sky in the previous picture. Sadly, one day before the solar eclipse, cloudy forecasts were coming true.

I'm usually not keen on visiting botanical gardens, but I'm also frequently surprised by how interesting they turn out to be. That was the case today as we walked along pathways lined with regional plants.

The thorny, skeletal plant in the next picture looked particularly scary!

Some pretty flowers were sparsely distributed along the way.

We came upon a collection of ant lion traps. Someone gently disturbed the side slope of one, and we could see a quick temporary response at the bottom. If ants could dream, ant lions would star in ant nightmares!

Of course there had to be cactus displays with strange growths and flowers.

These odd looking cactus growths seem alien.

Our final botanical stop was in the peaceful Japanese Garden.

Next, we boarded our bus and drove to the Witte Museum which featured a variety of exhibits mostly about Texas geology, wildlife, fossils, culture, indigenous people, and history. There were dioramas illustrating Texas wildlife like the javelinas and wildcat shown below.

I was particularly impressed with two enormous fossils from the Cretaceous era. First, was the frightening large head of Deinosuchus riograndensis, an alligator relative whose body was 11-12 meters long weighing up to five tons. The bite force pressure was calculated to be 23,000 pounds per square inch. It's hard to tell from the next picture how shockingly big the head is because there's no human sized object nearby for reference, but it was roughly a meter long if not more. Standing next to the skull give me chills!

The next impressive fossil might be even more horrifying - a complete skeleton of Quetzalcoatlus Northropi said to be possibly the largest known flying animal. This time you can judge the size by comparing to the man standing nearby. Imagine standing before one of these living creatures in fear for your life!

I was particularly interested in the meteorite exhibit. First below is a cross section cut through the Odessa Meteorite discovered in 1922 in Ector County, Texas. The iron-nickel interior shows the characteristic Widmanstatten pattern formed by extremely slow cooling from a molten state. So this meteorite probably came from the core of a violently shattered large asteroid.

A similar internal pattern was present in a fragment of the Canyon Diablo meteor also on display. The Canyon Diablo meteor formed the famous Meteor Crater in Arizona.

When a large energetic meteor strikes the ground it can melt earth as well as itself. The molten stuff flies out of the crater and eventually solidifies in a debris field around the crater. Tektites are bits of this solidified debris. Some tektites are quite beautiful like these green glassy examples called Moldavites formed by a huge impact crater 15 million years ago in southern Germany.

Another nice tektite on display was yellowish Libyan Desert Glass. The display information said sand would have to be raised to a temperature of about 1600 centigrade to form this glass, so a meteor impact long ago is the probable cause. Some of this glass turned up in Tutankhamun's chest plate.

An amazing collection of elaborately decorated dresses and trains were displayed on the second floor. The dresses were part of San Antonio's Fiesta celebration over the years. Next is how the exhibit is described.

Here is a small sample of the many spectacular dresses on display.

Next are examples of dresses and trains worn by two past Fiesta Queens.

While waiting for our bus after leaving the museum a butterfly posed nicely on some flowers.

The next stop was a boat tour of the San Antonio Riverwalk. We were fortunate to have an excellent pilot/guide for the tour.

Here are three views we saw while cruising along the river.

Certain sections with restaurants and shops were quite crowded and noisy. It could be difficult walking along the narrow path at times with all the jostling people looking at their phones.

The Riverwalk is not just one straight channel. It has some side channels and loops branching off the main waterway. Our guide took us on a variety of loops and branches. We saw this odd sculpture at one of the intersections.

Boats similar to ours also serve as water taxis to transport people up and down the Riverwalk. There were designated stations along the way where folks could board and exit the water taxis. Sometimes bridges arched over the canal so people could get from one side to the other.

We passed some unexpected things along the way including a theater section with a stage on one side of the canal and amphitheater seating on the opposite side. As we cruised by a group of young dancers were performing tap dance routines for the audience. We sailed by between the audience and the stage, temporarily having first row seats. We also passed this cowboy and cattle sculpture.

Most surprising was the resting snake on the riverbank.

After the river cruise we walked wearily back to our hotel and passed this interesting new/old building combination along the way.

The professional astronomer accompanying our tour gave an informative and entertaining illustrated talk after our evening dinner at the hotel. He did his best to give an optimistic assessment of the weather for the next day's solar eclipse, but prospects were poor. The best we could hope for, I thought, was an occasional break in the clouds. Here is the posted agenda for the next day.

The 5:45 start time next morning was an incentive for early bedtime after the astronomer presentation ended.