Last year we went to New York City for our Valentine Anniversary. I decided to pick somewhere warmer this year. San Antonio seemed like a great choice. I read that “The best time to visit San Antonio is from November to April, when the weather is comfortable and the hotel rates are lower.” February seemed like a good time to visit!
DAY 1 Saturday February 13, 2021 (Travel day – Louisville to San Antonio to Corpus Christie)
We left Louisville at 6am, with a flight to Chicago Midway. After a short layover, it was on to San Antonio. We arrived in San Antonio on time, picked up our rental car, and headed to Corpus Christie for a couple of days. Everything was going according to plan.
Some of the possible activities in San Antonio included visiting the USS Lexington, The Texas State Aquarium, and Snoopy’s Pier. After a nice dinner at Rudy’s BBQ, I checked the website for the hours of the USS Lexington. It stated that it would open at 9am Sunday, and would be closing at 4pm, and remain closed on Monday due to inclement weather . That set our agenda for the next couple of days. If we wanted to visit the USS Lexington (or aquarium), we would have to do it on Sunday.
Day 2 Sunday February 14, 2021 (Corpus Christie)
After a nice breakfast at the hotel, we decided to head to the USS Lexington. It was a brisk walk up the “gangplank”. We started the tour by heading to the theater, and watching a movie about Aircraft carriers. We then took the longest tour that led us through the dining facility, chapel , dental clinic, women’s birthing area, machine shop, and several other areas.
After the tour, we thought about heading directly to Snoopy’s pier, but decided to wait a while , since we were still satisfied from breakfast.
After relaxing in the hotel for a while, we headed to Snoopy’s Pier. We pulled into the parking lot, and while trying to figure out which door was the entrance, a man came out to our car to greet us. He informed us they were getting ready to close. He said that some of his employees had a long drive, and he needed to get them home before that bad weather hit. (which was supposed to start around 6pm). We were disappointed , as we had already looked over their menu. Fortunately Doc’s Seafood was next door , which also came highly recommended. We enjoyed our dinner at Doc’s Seafood restaurant. Little did we know that it would be a few days before we would have another sit-down meal.
As we were leaving the restaurant, the employees were busy spreading salt on the walkway leading into the restaurant.
Day 3 Monday February 15, 2021 (Corpus Christie to San Antonio)
Waking up in Corpus Christie Monday morning, it was cold and icy. The car was iced over, and of course we did not have an ice scraper. Originally we thought we could spend the better part of the day in Corpus Christie, and then head to San Antonio later in the day. However, with the weather, we decided to head back to San Antonio after breakfast.
The GPS directions told us to get highway 358 to interstate 37 to get back to San Antonio. Unfortunately, all the ramps to 358 near our hotel were closed. I sent a text to a friend that lives in Corpus Christie for suggestions for an alternate route. She sent me a hurricane evacuation map , and made alternate suggestions. So we finally found an alternate route to interstate 37, only to find that the ramps to interstate 37 were closed too! We had to continue to take back roads, finally able to pick up 37 around Mathis. The two hour drive back to San Antonio took over four hours!
We checked into the Embassy Suites San Antonio River Walk . While checking in they informed us that they would be offering a complementary meal during the evening reception because all the restaurants in the area were closed. Kudos to the Embassy Suites!!
Day 4 Tuesday February 16, 2021 (San Antonio)
Tuesday was another cold day in San Antonio. The Alamo was closed as most of the local downtown restaurants. I made reservations for Wednesday, with hopes the Alamo would open back up. We spent most of the day enjoying our nice cozy hotel room, and the premium movie channels. The Embassy Suites provided another hot entrée during the evening reception.
Day 5 Wednesday February 17, 2021
We were notified my email that the Alamo was closed again (It didn’t open back up until Saturday).
The temperature was above freezing, so we decided to make the half mile walk from our hotel to the Alamo. We figured if we could not go inside, at least we could see it from the outside. It was as nice walk, however many of the sidewalks were very icy. We really had to watch our steps.
We were really wanting to try a good Tex-Mex restaurant. The hotel provided a list of nearby restaurants, and The Iron Cactus was recommended. Becky saw that restaurant when searching for ones that served stuff avocados. Unfortunately, the Iron Cactus, and most other downtown restaurants were still closed. We decided we would find another Tex-Mex restaurant, away from downtown, and would just drive there.
Before going to dinner , I received a text that our flight for Thursday had been changed. I noticed the new time was 8am, and thought so much for sleeping in on our last day. Becky looked at her Southwest app, and it was not 8am for Thursday. It was 8am for Sunday! They cancelled our flight, and rebooked us for three days later! We decided to go eat dinner, and deal with our flight home later.
We went to eat at Esmeralda’s Mexican Restaurant. The place received really good reviews even though the place didn’t have much curb appeal. It must have been a local favorite, as the drive through was lined up.
When the waitress came to our table, she informed us they were out of chips. We both thought she said they were making more, but we might have misunderstood her. She never did bring us any chips, and we noticed that other customers did not receive any chips either. The food was decent, even though the service was lacking. We had to unlock the door and let ourselves out when we left. They had already locked the door, and were closing early.
When we returned to our hotel, we had a decision to make about our return trip home. We figured we had three choices. 1) Keep the flight change, and stay in San Antonio until Sunday 2) Forget about flying home, and drive the rental car home 3) Find an alternate flight.
We really did not want to stay in San Antonio three more days. I already looked at the weather forecast, and anticipated that the weather would have only cooperated for one day. The Alamo had already made decision to close again for the following day. I also was not too thrilled about the idea of driving straight home, because I was not sure how good the weather would be along the route home. That left trying to switch the flight.
I was on hold with Southwest for over two hours. While waiting on hold , we started packing up everything , with the anticipation that we would be leaving soon. We also started checking on flights ourselves. We found a couple of alternate flights leaving on Thursday — from Dallas, a four hour drive from San Antonio. The customer service representative from Southwest wasn’t much help. She checked San Antonio, Austin, and Houston, and could not find us an alternate flight before Sunday. We asked about the flight from Dallas, and she was able to book that flight .. . with an upgrade charge (which was later reversed).
We were packed up , and ready to leave by the time I hung up with Southwest. Our trip home would consist of three legs , drive to Dallas, flight from Dallas to Orlando, Flight from Orlando to Louisville.
Homeward Bound
We left San Antonio by 6;30pm, and the GPS estimated arrival time had us getting to Dallas by 11pm. Unfortunately, the estimated arrival time started to slip rather quickly. Every time the directions had us merging from the frontage road to the highway, the on ramp was closed . We kept going further down, until we ran out of frontage road. Finally we turned around went the opposite direction. We were finally able to find an on ramp, but we wasted an hour trying to get out of town.
Once we finally got on the right road, we started making fairly good time . I was thinking once we made it to Dallas, it would only be another 12 hours of driving time. We could just drive all night , and head on home.
It didn’t take long for me put away thoughts of driving all the way home . The roads started to deteriorate before we hit Austin. There were some sections we could not drive any faster than 20 mph. I went from thinking we were going to drive all night to get home to wondering if we were even going to make it to Dallas in time to catch our flight. Our flight was at 9:50am. I figured we needed to be at the airport no later than 8am to drop off our car, and get checked in.
There was one point during our trip that we were at a complete stand still on the interstate. A semi-truck driver that was in front of me got out of his vehicle, and asked me if I could go around him. He said he was stuck, and wanted to try backing up. We saw several other vehicles sitting and spinning as well. Our Nissan Rogue Sport that we rented handled quite well in the ice. We were able to maneuver round him, and continue on our journey.,
Fortunately, the roads improved somewhat the closer we got to Dallas. We ended up returning the rental car around 07:30 that morning. By the time we checked our luggage, and made it through security we had about half an hour to spare!!