Leon Creek Greenway, San Antonio, TX -- Sun., Jan. 27

The Leon Creek Greenway Trail System currently has 15 miles of paved or natural surface trails. On today's Volksmarch Bob and I covered 3.1 miles, then turned around and retraced our steps for the other 3.1 miles.

Unlike other Volksmarches we've done in rural parks, this one is a suburban "greenway." Greenway parks are stretches of natural areas which provide trails through the city for local wildlife. (And people too, but no houses are on the greenway itself--although houses and apartments back up to the greenway.)

We started our walk at 12:09 p.m. to clouds and 65 degrees. About two-thirds of the way through the walk, the sun came out and the temperature soared to 76 degrees. It got hot on the trail and we were sweating...not a lot of shade. I can't imagine doing this walk during the daylight hours in 100-degree heat of summer. One nice plus was a cool-ish breeze blowing around us.

This is a very popular trail. We encountered walkers, joggers, but mostly bike riders, and one skateboarder. I'm sure it would have been a lot more crowded if we had been there earlier or later in the day. 

Let's take a look at what we saw:

A nice, wide, paved trail.

Some art on a trail wall.

Leon "Creek" is pretty much a dry wash.

Suburbia--see the apartments just off the trail?

Winter in Texas.

School bus line up.

Great trail directions.

All the stats about the trail.

Big clouds building up.

Love the nice lines on the bridge.

Doesn't Bob look like Lt. Provenza from "The Closer"?

Water appeared magically in this section of the creek.

Love how this bridge looks like it goes on forever.

Alert roadrunner. He ran off just after I snapped the photo.

It took us one hour and 48 minutes for today's 6.2 mile (10K) walk. As usual, after we walk we were ready to eat. We planned to see "Red Dawn" at Cinemark 16 and Wendy's is right next to it. I had the baked potato with a small chili all mixed together. Bob had a baked potato with butter and sour cream and a side salad. We made it to the movie just before they dimmed the lights. We were surprised how many people were in the theater considering "Red Dawn" has been out for a while already.

The movie was excellent. I really got into it. It was funny, exciting, sad, intense. I had never seen the original "Red Dawn," but Bob had. He told me, "If you like this one, you'll love the original. It had much more character development." So we will rent the original "Red Dawn" from Netflix.

After the movie, Bob drove me around the medical center complex of San Antonio--VA, University Hospital, several facilities in the Methodist Hospital system, Christus Medical Center and Baptist Hospital. That's a lot of medical facilities. I told Bob I hope I don't ever have to see the inside of one of those again.

On our trip back to the 5er we criss-crossed some streets in the King Williams Historic District. Here are some of the homes we saw.

Nice, eh?

Bob has been telling me for about a month that I need to read the historic marker in front of the Lighthouse for the Blind Activity Center. (That's directly across the street from The Lighthouse for the Blind that we toured last Thursday.) I didn't have time to run across the street and read it then, so we stopped today. It is a very lengthy, in-depth historic marker telling all about El Camino Real (King's Road) and the early history of Texas--the road is intrinsic to the history of Texas. It is also called The Old San Antonio Road.

In the picture below, note the progress (?) from deer to Native Americans to horses to missions to factories and then, ta-da, RVs! I think that's pretty cool they used an RV.

OK. That was a full day. We got back to the 5er at 5:30 p.m, watched "60 Minutes," and Bob watched the exhibition Pro Bowl game played in Hawaii.

Bob says, "And the Blazers are down by five at the half, if you need to get all the news in."

Ha ha, Bob, I guess I got all the news in.

Here's our little darlings:

Sunnie and Bowie.

Travel Bug out.