MLK Road Trip

San Marcos
To begin the fabulous journey, two friends (Jessica and Jenise) from church and I piled into the "beefy echo" (to which I may call it "Jane" as in "plain Jane" because of the no frills wonder) and drove to Kerrville, via San Marcos. The trip went quickly it seemed, because we chatted. In San Marcos, we were a bit disappointed in the outlet malls. We were expecting lower prices because of the lower quality of what we found. Oh no! Although I found a fun shirt for $7, I think Jenise came out on top with her steal bargain of a much needed denim jacket. Jessica has the best story from the outlet mall, because she ran into her high school principal who doesn't live either in her hometown or in San Marcos! crazy...but not the craziest...

Kerr-Vegas
Half of Sunday was spent in Kerrville. J and J went to church with me and the weirdest thing happened. I shouldn't even be surprised at these random connections, but a young man who goes to my church back home now (whom I'd never met; I think he moved in October) ran into us on the way in. Jenise knew him because he and his twin sister used to visit their grandparents in Jenise's hometown. Jessica knew of him because her best friend at Tech was his twin sister's best friend in high school. What he is doing living in Kerrville is beyond me. There's not much for a young 20 something to do...or other young 20 somethings to hang out with.

Lunch was wonderful at our local Mamacita's for Tex-Mex-Iranian food. Since it has a 1/3 replica of the Alamo inside, we decided to visit San Antonio...

San Antonio
The afternoon was spent being educated on the Alamo and walking (and getting lost several times) on the Riverwalk. We dined at this Italian restaurant on the Riverwalk, which I do not recommend. Our poor waiter was having a rough evening. He dropped about 4 plates, spilled a large glass of water on a nearby customer, forgot Jessica's tea (and when another waiter brought her some, it was nothing more than colored water), and took his sweet time getting our food, check, etc... It wasn't busy either... no excuses.
So, we went to another restaurant for dessert where a young man with a mohawk (we got the full story about mohawks, by the way) was very friendly and fun. We discussed our waiter issues with him and he discussed his tip issues with us. Turns out our one piece of cheesecake split amongst us was "on the house." So, after the tip discussion, we decided to tip him (for an amount way above the normal amount, but not enough to cover the dessert... good, bad, comments?) and leave.

Comfort
On our way home, we stopped in Comfort, TX on a wild goose chase for this super-cute church that Jessica had heard about. It was 10:30 at night and we happened to stumble across the Comfort Cloisters church (so cute!), took pictures, and almost hit a few deer as we tried to get back on the highway...

Speaking of deer...
Jonathan (little bro) hit two deer on his way home to make curfew. He and his buddies were smart enough to realize that not making sure the little bambies were dead was against the law, so they got out of the truck and tried to help. Well, Jono's pocket knife wasn't quite sharp enough to slit the throat (or even cut the hair on the neck), so they tried to snap the neck and put the poor animal out of her misery. They couldn't turn the neck without the entire body turning, so one of them stepped on the hind legs, which created quite a stir in the defenseless doe. She jumped up, thudded about three steps into the bushes and then....silence... they were too startled themselves at this point to go check on her, so they came home to tell the tale.

When Jessica, Jenise, and I drove into our neighborhood, also speaking of deer, we saw an entire pack (herd?) of them in my neighborhood. This did not particularly surprise me, but they thought it was odd that deer would just roam around town. "My neighbors feed them," I tried to explain.

Kerrville and James Avery
MLK Monday, before we drove the 6 hours back to Dallas, we decided to go visit James Avery's retail store and visitor shop. Highlights: James Avery walked past us in the retail store (we weren't quick enough to get him to sign our catalogs, though); we watched a video circa 1991 about how they make the jewelry; a cute old man showed us his role in the workshop. He was so flustered, but did a good job explaining his job regardless.

And so ends the amazing adventure!