Ellie and I opened the Adventure Book this past weekend and had a one-tank adventure more or less courtesy of the Republic of Texas. See this year marks the 175th anniversary of the Texas Revolution. That's when Texas became an independent republic, that is a nation of its own, about ten years before it became a state of the good old USA.
To mark this seminal occurrence the state has scheduled several celebratory events at sites that are significant in the Texas war of independence. In order to encourage folks to visit these historic sites the state has issued a “Passport to Texas History”. This is a little booklet that tells a bit about each of the seven sites and also tells you what you should see while you're there. One of the sites that is familiar to most people is the Alamo in San Antonio. Other important sites are less well known. For example, while lots of people know the story of the Alamo, probably fewer of them have even heard of the San Felipe de Austin state historic site in East Texas where Stephen F. Austin established his original colony. When you visit a site on the list you get your passport stamped to show that you've been there. If you collect all of the stamps you get a souvenir of the 175th anniversary. So visiting all of the sites listed in the passport will enable Ellie and me to learn more about Texas history and have some adventures while we're at it.
We made our first stop on the Texas independence trail in February when we went to Washington on the Brazos, where the Texas declaration of independence was signed. That's where we picked up our passport. We spent the day touring the site, which is a Texas state park, watching reenactors and talking with the folks at the living history farm on the site. This past weekend we decided to visit Gonzales, where the revolution started.
We began our trip by driving to San Marcos for lunch at the Charles Cock House Museum Cottage Kitchen. Every Friday a different volunteer group puts on a lunch at the Cottage Kitchen for seven dollars per person. That usually includes an entree and a couple of sides as well as a drink and dessert. It's not a BOGO, but it's a pretty good deal and San Marcos is a great little college town with neat shops and restaurants.
After lunch and some shopping in San Marcos, we drove southeast to Gonzales where the Texas Revolution began when the Mexican authorities demanded the return of a cannon loaned to the people of Gonzales who replied “Come and take it!” First we went to the Chamber of Commerce where we had our passport stamped to show that we had made this stop on the independence trail. Then we toured the Old Jail Museum which is in the same building as the Chamber of Commerce and which still has a working gallows. From the jail we drove a few blocks to the Gonzales Memorial Museum. We were a little disappointed that the famous cannon, which is normally housed in the Memorial Museum, was out on tour for the independence celebration, but there were many other things to see at the museum and we enjoyed our tour. One of the other attractions of Gonzales is a Pioneer Village, but we had seen that on a previous trip so we elected to pass on it this time and do a little shopping before we headed back home. It was dinner time by the time we made it back to our neck of the woods so we stopped and ate at a restaurant near home.
Even with the high price of gas these days, this was a relatively low cost adventure. We only used half a tank of gas. Lunch for the two of us was only $14 and we could have gotten away with a cheap dinner as well if we had used a BOGO coupon, but we decided to splurge a bit on dinner.
While I know that the “Passport to Texas History” is a one-time Texas thing, it occurred to me that anyone could make up his own “passport to history” for his own state or country. All it would take is a little searching on the Internet to find some historically significant sites in the area you would like to visit. If you want to keep the cost down you can use any mapping site to make sure that you can get to all of the historical sites and back home again on one tank of gas with no nights on the road. Then you can learn something about the history of your area and have some adventures too. Who knows, you just might create your own Adventure Book.
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