After sleeping in and enjoying our lazy morning, we called the valet, packed up our car, and gave the car back to the valet (I sound so fancy), then headed over to The Alamo. It was strange to see that it was just this awesome historical sight, surrounded by gas stations and hotels. Inside, we learned about the restoration of the church and what that entails, then we went outside to roam the grounds, which were beautiful! I think a lot of people think The Alamo is just that one building, but there were a lot of additional smaller buildings and nooks back there.

The Alamo Cannons walkway (restored historic cannons)

I spent a lot of time taking photos, of course, of the beautiful grounds, fountains, and statues.

Fountain behind the Exhibit Hall

Looking toward the gift shop

Monument with the flags of the countries fighters represented in the Battle of the Alamo

James Bowie (Co-Commander of the Alamo)

Susannah Dickinson & Angelina Dickinson

Beautiful close-up of Susannah

William Barret Travis ("Victory or Death!" ensured Texans remembered the Alamo)

Lest We Forget! Clara Driscoll is to thank for sharing The Alamo!

And I know that you all are curious, but, guys, I think Jan Hooks was wrong... I think there is a basement in The Alamo! And I think I found the secret entrance!

Surely, all I gotta do is shimmy down this drain pipe here and get my bike...

Okay, maybe not, but there was one guy there who 'got' my tee-shirt reference (see the awesomeness at the end of this post), so that's good enough for me.

We, of course, hit up the gift shop for a few magnets, and took a few more photos on the way back to the hotel.

This is the photo with the fewest number of visitors in it

The Alamo Cenotaph (aka The Spirit of Sacrifice)

For lunch, we went to the only fast food joint worthy of being eaten on a Texas vacation: Whataburger. In a quiet part of town, near a hospital, it was super-quiet while we were there, so we kind of hung out and enjoyed our meal and each other. Not part of the original plan, we kicked around the idea of heading down to Galveston instead of spending the afternoon in Houston. I pulled up Google Maps to see how far we were from Galveston, and there was a note that our travel time could be impacted by nearby Tropical Activity... Uh, what? Oh, nothing, just Tropical Storm Nicholas, out there in the Gulf that we had no idea was an issue! See, this is the downside of unplugging during a vacation! If I was at home, I'd have known about this days ago.

It didn't look like it was going to be too much of an issue, so we kind of just forgot about it, and made our way to our next stop, Monster Mini-Golf. Even though I'm the one that found it online, I wasn't sure what to actually expect, and I don't think it was quite this.

When we walked in, it looked like a dark, abandoned skating rink from 1999. Everything was lit up with black lights! There was an arcade and a ticket redemption counter, which I think was also the register. We paid for a round of golf and made our way to the course.

The course itself is wonky! There are no windmills or dinosaurs here; this is a course that gets its challenges from angles. No hills or bumps or secret paths... You can see in the photo that there are all these orange "grid lines;" those are the course lanes! Trying to fit an 18-hole golf course into an area so small can mean that the individual holes are confusing. And there's nowhere to stand, except on the 'curbs,' unless there's no one playing the hole near you (we would just stand in that hole, if so).

This photo is brighter than it was actually inside the building!

Also, the physical holes themselves were hard to see sometimes. One of us would do some recon to find it before the other started putting. For all I know, all of the holes had some sort of shortcut or pass-through type hole, but I only saw it on one of them. We got stuck on one, whose hole up was at the top of a hill that had ramps on either side. Neither of us could get it just right to where it would go up the ramp to the hole, but not overshoot and roll down the other side. We eventually just gave up and moved on. All in all, a cute idea, but not my idea of good mini-golf.

Back in the car, we spent some time trying to figure out the afternoon... We still wanted to go to Galveston, but kind of waffled, because of that storm. We said fuck it, squeaked out ADVENTURE in our funniest voices, and got back on the road.

Near exit 30 on Interstate 35, there was a massive back-up. We let Garmin detour us around, and took some random ass roads over to Interstate 10. When we got near Katy, the misty drizzle had started, enough to make driving suck. I soldiered through for a little while, but as we made it past South Houston, I realized that it was raining harder and harder, I was getting more and more grumpy, and I knew that I wouldn't have fun once we got down there. So, we turned around, and headed to our hotel on the eastern side of Houston, in Channelview.

Ladies, and gentlemen, I would like to caution you here... sometimes, betting on saving time and money by staying outside a metropolis area is a good bet. Sometimes not. Tonight was definitely a not.

At check-in, we got a room on the third floor. Okay, not a big deal, right?

Yeah, the elevator was broken. So we had to drag our suitcases up two flights of stairs to the room.

Once inside, I went back out to pick up dinner at Jack in the Box, which was a joke in and of itself. Yes, I know we're in Covid Times <insert wanking hand gesture here>, and that there are all sorts of issues, but damn. Everything we wanted was out. They didn't have chicken fingers. They didn't have the sodas we usually drank. They were out of salt, for goodness' sake! I think we ended up with a Jumbo Jack with fries, and a spicy chicken sandwich (meh).

Back at the hotel, I parked at the back door, right by the stairs (for the ease of leaving in the morning), but just my luck, the back door was locked, and wouldn't open with our room keys, so I had to walk through the now pouring rain to the front of the hotel, walk on their soaking wet and slippery tiled floors, all the way over to the stairwell (from which I could see the car I just left), and back up two flights of stairs to the room.

And after eating this banquet of a meal, you'd think I'd be able to soak the day away with a luxurious bath, right? Nope. This room only had a freakin' shower. Buttheads. So I just tweeted and chilled out, before finally falling asleep.