Part 2: The 2006 Texas Independence Tour, Austin to Port Aransas

(Part 1 of this trip can be found blogged here)

Continued: Day Two - Wednesday, July 26 - Austin to Port Lavaca.

I realized yesterday that y'all probably have no idea where in Texas all this is, so here's a map that will give you a clue. This is a county map; at the time of this trip, I lived in the north central part of the state, just two counties south of the Red River and the TX/OK state line (Denton County). Travis County is where Austin is located. The line I drew is really only a vague approximation of our actual route, based on the counties we visited.







By this point in the trip, we had covered Austin through Goliad. We were kind of tired and needed to find someplace to stay for the night. I was under the impression we were going to stay in Victoria, so we'd only have a short hop to Refugio and down to Corpus Christi the next day, but it was only four in the afternoon and hey, neither of us had been down to Port Lavaca. So.....





The Victoria County courthouse, built in 1892. This one's not actually in use today; across the street from it is a much more modern building, built in 1967. What struck me about Victoria was how different it was from the rest of this part of the state. It had a skyline, of sorts, punctuated with a bank building and the like. Victoria has a population of just around 50,000, boasts two university campuses (U of Houston at Victoria, and Victoria College), and is situated as kind of the "big city" between Corpus Christi and Houston (it's about equi-distant from San Antonio and Austin, as well). I live in a suburb of Dallas that boasts a population of around 90,000 people, so I wasn't all that impressed, just thrown off given the small towns nearby.

We hit Victoria just as the business day was ending, so we hit some small traffic in the square and took the extra time to examine the monuments. This part of the state was host to several Indian tribes (the Karankawa were last reported to be seen here in 1840, before they fled to Mexico), and this particular area was notable for being the only primarily Mexican portion of Coahuila y Tejas (the name of the state Texas was a part of under Mexican rule) at the time of the Revolution.

We stayed the night in Port Lavaca, in Calhoun County, on the Texas coast. This was another county seat, but the historical courthouse was a huge mess from renovation, and the county annex building was utterly unremarkable. We checked in at Best Western, then went in search of food. I heard from the desk clerk about a bar and seafood grill in Indianola, so we went out in search of it. Fifteen miles of coastal cattle fields later, we found no such place, but we did find Indianola, a "Gulf Coast ghost town." Utterly unremarkable (just a few RV parks and a gas station), except for it's role in history. Indianola as a working seaport town was wiped out by a hurricane in the latter half of the 19th century, but it was a strategic point for the Confederacy. It was here that underwater mines were first invented and tested for use by the Confederate navy. The Union did occupy Port Lavaca in December 1863, but they would leave in June 1864.

(You should try and find a copy of Charlie Robison's "Indianola", by the way. Great song.)

Indianola was also where La Salle first landed in what would become the United States, and there is a marker and even a statue in Indianola to commemorate that.

Back in Port Lavaca, we ended up at a bar for dinner. Randy and I were the only customers, other than the two regulars who were there to harass the one waitress/bartender. The food was pretty good (shrimp for both of us), but one of the regulars, for whom Randy had a whole list of colorful nicknames, kept trying to get us to go fishing with him and kept putting his arms around my boyfriend. We stayed long enough to finish dinner and catch a little of the Astros game, then went back to the motel for a decent night's sleep.



Day Three - Thursday, July 27 - Refugio to Rockport

First stop on Thursday was in Refugio, for the courthouse. Pictured above is the Texas Revolution monument on the town square (Randy's on the phone). Refugio was cool because it was the first Irish settlement we came across; it was part of a land grant given to Empresario James Power. The name comes from the mission that was located here, Our Lady of Refuge. The town's name, however, is pronounced "reh-FEW-ree-o" (goodness knows why; I think it's a slurred version of the Spanish).




Refugio County courthouse, built in 1911. Hard to get a good picture of it since it's surrounded by trees and the morning was kind of foggy.

The drive southwest into San Patricio County was pretty uneventful and not very pretty. The county seat of San Patricio is Sinton, a town currently known for it's high school baseball team. Their mascot is the Scorpions. Sinton is also home to "Texas' largest squirrel," which I didn't get a picture of, sadly.



The San Patricio County courthouse. It's pretty big compared to most of the ones we saw (it reminded me of a high school), and from what we could tell, it was THE place to be in the county.




The San Patricio doughboy. Remarkable because it was the only strictly WWI monument I found on this trip (I believe it's the only one we've seen so far, actually). It was erected between the world wars, and if the sun had been shining you'd be able to tell that it's a very silvery statue. We weren't able to tell if it was the metal or paint.

From Sinton we headed down into Corpus Christi, in search of what proved to be elusive history.




The Nueces County courthouse. It was built in 1914, has survived countless hurricanes and tropical storms, and was abandoned in the 1970s. This is in Corpus Christi; the new courthouse is not close by, and isn't a particularly "pretty" building (the windows reflect gold, which I thought was tacky-looking), but I love this one. It's fenced off, to keep out vagrants, and it was reacquired by the state in the last six years or so (I last saw it in 2001, and I don't recall there being a fence or any sign of reconstruction). There's a sign that says the Texas Historical Commission is working to restore it, and the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports that renovation was supposed to be completely by July 2005 (the Texas Historical Commission's latest information says the first phase of restoration was completed in May 2006, just before our visit, which is plain from the picture. No word on whether further phases ever took place - I'd appreciate an update if you have one). This courthouse faces the ocean, which is about two hundred yards away - think of the weather it has survived!




The island on the USS Lexington. The Lex is a WWII-era aircraft carrier, now operated by the US Navy as a museum. She's docked in Corpus Christi bay. Bit of personal trivia - when my mom was in the Navy, this ship was in service as a training ship in Pensacola, Florida. My dad wants to retire and work as a volunteer on this ship. Anyway, being a bit of a Navy brat, the Lex was a big part of this trip for me. You can tour the whole thing, and they operate a program for Boy Scouts called "Live Aboard," where Scout troops can come and spend a weekend on the ship. My brother's troop did this once. It's pretty cool; they live in crew quarters and participate in various exercises designed to teach them how the Navy operates.

The plane in view in that picture is an F-14 Tomcat, the plane featured in Top Gun.




Me on the bridge. I'm a little windblown (okay, I'm a lot windblown).



Ahoy!



Randy complained that I made him look like a convict after getting this picture, the one of him in the Gonzales gallows, and also one I took of him in the Gonzales jail.

Randy's kinda tall, and aircraft carriers aren't really made for guys his size, so there was a lot of head-bumping and whatnot as we toured the ship.

After the Lex, we had lunch at Whataburger (we figured it was fitting, since the chain was founded in Corpus Christi), and headed to Rockport. Randy had an interview on a radio show in Houston and we needed to find our motel so he could use a landline.

Rockport's a pretty cool seashore town. Not really a tourist trap like a lot of other places (Port Lavaca was the exception - it's a shrimping town, so there is absolutely no tourist industry). We got into town early enough to go searching for the courthouse. We found it, but it was built in the 1950s and was a little too "sterile" for my taste. So while Randy got his picture, I found this:




I really like old churches. This is an Episcopal church that was built sometime before 1950. There was a beautiful Catholic church in town, too, but no good angle for pictures.

Randy did the interview (knocked it out of the park, really - it was about the 2006 November election and the effect of independent candidates in the gubernatorial race on the down-ballot....you know what, it's political and he did awesome, that's all the necessary information :-). We watched some baseball and just kicked back for awhile, then decided to head out in search of dinner.



The Fulton Mansion. We found it on the way to dinner. It was completed in 1877, and was the home of Robert Fulton, a Texas Revolution hero who later became a cattle baron. It was closed by the time we got there, but the grounds were beautiful and I really loved the house itself. The view from the porch is amazing (and I'm sure it was even better before the paved roads and tourists' boats came along), but my camera lens kept fogging up because of the humidity around here.

We had dinner at a place called The Boiling Pot in Fulton, where Randy convinced me to try crab legs. I'd never had crab legs (I'm a terrible seafood novice, really, even now), and I have to say, I was not disappointed. This place was really laid back and clearly a local favorite, and we had a blast.

Full of cajun food and sleepy from the day in total (it was very windy all day, because we caught the back end of some storms that hit further up the coast). So it was back to the motel, where Randy read and I watched a baseball game. It was a great ending to the day, and to our time on our own.

Day 4 - Friday, July 28 (Port Aransas!!)



We got up on Friday morning and hit the grocery store for supplies (food and BEvERages for 25 people). Then we drove down to Port Aransas and drop the stuff off at the condos, drove back to Corpus Christi to pick someone up at the airport, and then back to Port A.

I saw dolphins while we were on the ferry from Aransas Pass to Port Aransas!!

Randy made cajun-seasoned tilapia for lunch, and we hit the pool while waiting for everyone to arrive.



We hung out a banner and put groceries away in three different condos.




You can sort of tell how nice the condos were in this shot. They were pretty new; the first had three stories, and two balconies. The top floor was just the master bedroom, with king-size bed, and bathroom, with jacuzzi tub.




More waiting and drinking, still on the first afternoon.

Once more people had arrived and we weren't really waiting on anyone specific, we gathered the troops and headed out to a restaurant called the Crazy Cajun.




Me and Tony, a friend from UT. His first time having crab, and of course I was showing off.

We opted not to head to the beach that first night, but first thing the next morning.

The rest of the weekend was pretty cut-and-dried. Beach, pool, beer, football, more beer, barbeque, grilling, beer, etc. Some YCT work had to get done - stuffing envelopes for a fundraiser. I worked on that with some others while Randy and Jenn (our friend Patrick's wife; she wasn't a YCT-er but thanks to Patrick has become one of us) grilled burgers and shrimp. Randy and I went for a walk on the beach Saturday night and saw some shooting stars. Sunday morning, we got up early to clean and have our state board meeting.

Randy retired as state chairman on Sunday, and David was elected as our new chairman.

Some pics from the rest of the weekend:




Trying to throw David into the pool.




Tony, making "sand angels." I thought he was playing dead.




View of the ocean.




Horrible picture of me as we're packing up to leave.

We had some friends with us in the car on the way home, so we didn't stop in Bee County for the last of the courthouse shots. We made it back to Austin, dropped the girls off, and then worked on unloading the truck. Somehow we ended up with more stuff on the way home than on the way down.

And so ends the tale of our 2006 Texas Independence Tour. Hopefully these posts were as educational for you as the trip itself was for us!

The 2006 Texas Independence Tour, Austin to Port Aransas

So YCT (the political group Randy and I were both active in for several years) has an annual retreat in the summer, and in 2006 it was held down on the Texas coast, at Port Aransas. Port A is basically a tourist trap; not as popular with the college crowd as South Padre Island, which makes it much more tolerable, but just to give you an example - the daily population of Port Aransas is about 2000, and on the weekends it jumps as high as 5000. For retreat, we rent out a few condos for two nights sometime in the summer, and round up whoever wants to go (and is willing to drop about $100 for accommodations and a couple of meals). As far as states go, Texas is huge, as you all are probably aware of. It's a fourteen-hour trip from Amarillo to Port Aransas. So we don't get a big turnout to these coastal trips, which happen every couple of years (we also do retreat down somewhere on the Frio or Guadalupe Rivers, and in the Hill Country at Lake LBJ or Lake Buchanan)

In 2006, Randy and I had just started dating, and he was relinquishing his position as YCT state chairman the weekend of the retreat. We decided to make a whole vacation out of it. I met him in Austin on Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning we headed south along the Texas Independence Trail, to see the sights and spend some quality time together. We were dating long-distance and times like this were very important in our courtship.

Day One - Tuesday, July 25, 2006 - Dallas to Austin. I took a train down to Austin, my first train ride ever. The train station is in downtown Dallas, which is about a 25-35 minute drive south from where I live. The trip itself was great; there were relatively few people on the train, and it was quiet. The only snag was the three-hour wait in Fort Worth. The electrical switch just before the Ft. Worth station went down, and it took two hours for it to get fixed. Then we made the stop to pick up people, and then just as we were pulling out of the station, we got held up for an hour by freight traffic. Three hours of seeing I-30 out my window. UGH. So my train got into Austin at 11:30 Tuesday night.



Union Station, in Dallas. The building itself is about 75 years old, I think, which isn't very old, but it's a pretty cool building nonetheless.



The Dallas Morning News building. It's across the street from Union Station; this is a really cool part of Dallas, actually. The Sixth Floor Museum (which was the Dallas School Book Depository), where Kennedy was shot, is about two or three blocks away.



The Hyatt. This was the view from my window on the train, while we were in Dallas. I love this building, and it was just about the last bit of modern architecture I saw for the next six days.

Day Two - Wednesday, July 26 - Austin to Port Lavaca. We left fairly early in the morning, but late enough to avoid the bulk of rush hour traffic. Not that it mattered much; Randy opposes taking major freeways when you can take backroads (if you've got the time, that is). I'm all for it. That's how you get to see the best things, and meet the best people. So we drove down to Gonzales, and there started our Texas Independence tour.



Gonzales is noteworthy because it's where the first battle in the Texas Revolution took place, but it was also home to a great many Confederate soldiers. The first thing I found there was this plaque, donated to the women of the Confederacy. I've seen a lot of monuments and memorials to the Confederacy, but never to Confederate women. The inscription moved me - "Whose hearts bled, whose hands healed, whose pride was crucified, yet who were never conquered by the bitterness of war nor the devastation of Reconstruction."



The actual Confederate monument; behind it is the town's fire station, built in the 1920s, I believe, and still in use.



The Immortal 32 monument. Gonzales was the only town to answer Travis' call for help at the Alamo. Thirty-two Gonzales men marched to San Antonio and met their end there. This monument stands as a memorial to them, and also to the 18 men who died in the Battle of Gonzales a few months prior.



This is Randy reading the historical marker about Andrew Ponton, who was the "Alcalde of Gonzales" in 1835 when the Mexicans came for the cannon the town used for defense. More on that in a bit.



The Gonzales County courthouse. I've mentioned before that Randy's hobby is collecting photographs of the courthouses in Texas. There are 254 counties in the state, and Randy's got pictures of just over 120 courthouses so far. We got a total of ten over the weekend, and could have gotten eleven, but we decided against stopping in Beeville (Bee County) on the way home on Sunday. I got pictures of just a few of the prettier and older courthouses on the trip.



Me in the Gonzales County jail. The whole jail is a museum now. They have never updated it with air conditioning (or, to our knowledge, heating), so it's pretty true to it's original feel. It's a fairly big jail, too, and this portion of it was presumably where solitary prisoners were held, and also those bound for the gallows. The cells are smaller, more closed off. I'm standing at the outside door and behind me are the actual cells. Nearby is an iron plate confirming that these bars were made in Pittsburgh, PA in 1883.



Randy at the gallows in the Gonzales jail. The museum guide told us that this was all a recreation, but that the gallows really were housed in this portion of the jail from about 1915 onwards. Prior to that they had the hangings outside (there are quite a few courthouses in Texas that are built close to huge oak trees, which were specifically used for hanging; I got a picture of one in Goliad County).



The museum in Gonzales. This is the home of the "Come and Take It" cannon, and was built in the 1930s, so it's a bit of a piece of history in and of itself (it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004). There's an amphitheater behind it that is used mainly for sunrise Easter Sunday church services now.



Randy and me with the "Come and Take It" cannon. This cannon was given to the citizens of Gonzales by the Mexican government in the 1820s to defend against Indian attacks. Some years later, there was a lot of unrest and talk of revolution. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was a horrible dictator and Texas chafed under his rule. In 1835, revolution began here in Gonzales. The Mexican government demanded the return of the cannon, and Andrew Ponton wrote a letter saying no, they weren't giving it back. The Mexican Army marched towards Gonzales, and the citizens buried the cannon in a peach orchard (there is a mechanic's shop standing in the spot today, and there's a marker showing where the cannon was buried). The Battle of Gonzales took place on October 2, 1835; the Texians (as they were called then) flew a flag the women had made that said "Come and Take It" and had a picture of a cannon on it. The Texians won that battle; the Mexicans didn't get the cannon, and it has been in Gonzales ever since (except for occasional tours around the state).

At this point, we were taken on a driving tour of the town by a man named Leon Netardus. This guy was pretty cool; he's well known to Texas historians because he knows so much about Gonzales, and he's the star of the Gonzales drama about Texas Independence (he plays Empresario Green DeWitt, whose land grant from the Mexican government formed this portion of Texas). Gonzales is an amazing historical gem; there are several historical mansions, most of which were built before 1900 (one or two as early as 1851).

Next stop....Shiner.




The Spoetzl brewery in Shiner, Texas, home of Shiner beers. We stopped to sample some beer (I'm a huge fan of Shiner Bock). Neither of us had ever had the Summer Stock, which is now called Kolsch, so that's what we had. Liked it so much that we bought a twenty-four pack at the town's only grocery store (Shiner is a very small town, about 2070 people). The brewery does offer tours, but only twice a day and we didn't really have time to stop and wait for the next one.



This is the Lavaca County courthouse in Hallettsville. We had lunch at the Novasad BBQ and Meat Market here, which is fairly well-known and has the best beef sausage either of us has ever had.

Then it was on to Goliad, a major place in Texas history.




The Goliad County courthouse. Not a great shot, really, but the courthouse is one of the oldest in Texas, built in 1894.



The hanging tree outside the courthouse in Goliad. There's even a plaque to mark it (I've seen other oak trees this size outside courthouses, but none that were marked). The story has it that this tree was used for both official and unofficial hangings. I want to note here that hanging is still the lawful punishment for horse theft in Texas (not that it's been done in probably a century...).




The plaque outside Mission Nuestra Senora del Espíritu Santo de Zuniga at the Goliad State Park. This mission is a replica of the original; the replica was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and the original was located here in 1749. A lot of the artifacts on-site are originals, dug up during excavations of the site during construction of the current building.




The Virgin Mary, above the front door of the church.




The pulpit inside the church. This church isn't used for mass; it's mostly filled with artifacts from the excavation and tools from the rebuilding. The mission was a major project that gave a lot of jobs to the area during the Great Depression, too, so there are a lot of displays dedicated to that.




Our Lady of Loreto Chapel at Presidio La Bahia. This is just up the road from Goliad State Park and is extremely significant to early Texas history. The current church building has been in use since 1779 and is currently operated by the Catholic Diocese of Victoria, Texas (the place was a fort for the Spanish in the 1700s, the Mexicans in the early 1800s, Texas during the Republic, and I believe it was used by the Confederacy as well). I was extremely interested to see this church; it appeals to the Catholic in me, and the historian.



One of the flags flown at the Presidio. This fort is important because it is where Colonel James Fannin and his men were stationed during the Texas Revolution, before they were slaughtered by General Urrea in 1836. Fannin called the place "Fort Defiance."



This bell hung at this mission 26 years before the American Declaration of Independence was signed (1776) (that church building no longer exists).



The altar inside the Presidio church. Mass is held here on Sundays at 5pm, and one day I'd like to go back for it. I've never taken an actual religious pilgrimage, but this was close. The church is amazing and old-fashioned (you can sort of see the prayer candles up front, which visitors are allowed to light), right down to the confessional in the back and a working belfry.



No word if this an original cannon, but this is the view from one of the cannon towers at the front of the Presidio.




View from one of the gun ports on the back wall of the Presidio. There is a road between the field and the wall, but I tried to make sure it wasn't in the shot. This field separates the Presidio from Fannin's grave.




This was as close as I would get for a picture (we did walk up to the monument to read the names and the dedication, though). This monument marks the place where Col. Fannin and his men were taken to and killed by Urrea. After their defeat in March 1836 (after the fall of the Alamo, which Fannin never reached), the wounded and surviving were taken back to Fort Defiance and held there for a week. On Palm Sunday, they were taken out to this field and murdered. Fannin, since he was the commanding officer, asked that he not be shot in the face, that his effects be returned to his family, and that he be given a Christian burial. He was shot in the face, the soldiers divided up his belongings, and he was left for the buzzards with the others. A few Texians did survive, playing dead or what have you, and escaped to the San Antonio River nearby. A few others, too wounded to try that, were rescued by a woman who came to be known as the Angel of Goliad. There is a monument to her nearby.

I don't think I can convey what this place means to me. It was a very solemn portion of our trip. The field near this monument is a quiet, eerie place, though the battle itself took places several miles from here.



The Fannin Monument at the battlefield, seven miles outside of Goliad. The state park is in terrible condition, but it does have a small display room with a historical timeline and plaque dedicated the man who donated this land to the Historical Commission. The monument is basically a miniature scale version of the San Jacinto monument (that one marks the place where Santa Anna was defeated by General Sam Houston, the battle that ended the Revolution and won Texas her independence from Mexico).



The Texas flag is the only one that flies at the Fannin battleground.


We ended the day in Victoria and then drove down to Port Lavaca to spend the night, and I have some pictures from that, but I'll include them in the next post (which will include Refugio, San Patricio, Corpus Christi/Nueces County/the USS Lexington, and Port Aransas).