Texas – the state with a big heart

Today we follow up our first post about our visit to CHA Anaheim, sharing with you our 24 hour round-trip to Texas in order to visit Michelle Oatman and the impression left on us by this big, warm-hearted state.

View of Los Angeles from Southwest Airlines flight to San Antonio

The stereotypical image we all have of Texas is of course of Stetson-wearing cowboys. We were therefore curious as we left CHA and LAX behind and flew through two time-zones to San Antonio in southern Texas.  Alas, no Stetsons were present in the aircraft!!

We arrived in San Antonio early in the afternoon and noticed immediately how relaxing and comfortable it felt in the airport compared to busy LA.  Heaven! As we went down to collect our cases we spotted two people peering down at us and figured out it was most likely Michelle and her hubby Craig!  Even though we’d seen pictures of each other, it’s always funny trying to spot someone for the first time in a crowd.  We should have guessed immediately that it was them, they had the same look on their faces as we did… ” is it them, it is them?”  Big smiles from both sides and we knew we were in the right place lol!

Craig and Michelle are the most wonderful hosts.  We can’t thank you guys enough! Straight after picking up our cases from the airport conveyor, all four of us headed off to our hotel to drop off our cases and then down to some serious sightseeing, starting with Hobby Lobby lol. Hey, we’d only just been to CHA and needed a new fix! Heidi couldn’t help but buy a few essentials of course!

Craig, Heidi, “Ted E.Bear” and Michelle feeding the troops

Hobby Lobby behind us, it was time to visit the donkeys!  Michelle and Craig’s cross-back donkeys are just such a great bunch of adorable characters!  They all have their personalities and are such fun to be with.  We fed them all carrots, you can see Ted E.bear joining us here.

We were a bit unlucky with the weather during our stay, it was freezing cold! Yet only the day before Craig had been working outside in his shorts it was so hot.  The world is upside down it seems!

Craig and Michelle live in a wonderful open country.  We imagined how amazingly beautiful the sunsets must be in this part of the world. Being cold when we visited, it was kind of strange for us Europeans to feel the cold while at the same time the grass was yellow from drought.   You can see in the photos just how dry the ground was.

Libbie is their new Miniature Australian Shepherd.  She is SOOOO cute! When we arrived she was whimpering away in her basket, scared to see us two strangers arriving.  She is really a darling little dog and our children would have LOVED playing with her.  They melted when they saw her in these pictures.

Craig and Michelle then took us to their favourite (and now ours too) Mexican restaurant.  We have no recollection of the names of the dishes we ate, but HEAVEN were they GOOD! Wouldn’t we just love to be able to visit again!!

With only one evening in San Antonio, we of course visited the world-famous Alamo.  Maybe due to the cold, we got some great tourist-free pictures as you can see.  We have more pictures of ourselves shivering in front of this view lol.

Who’s beautiful ?

It might have been unusually cold here, but we left with a warm feeling that we’ll never forget.

Thanks Michelle and Craig for your Texan hospitality which truly went above and beyond.

xx

Heidi and Stuart