In 2013 my hiking mileage of 111.4 miles had plummeted 58% from what it had been 2012, and was down 65% from my peak mileage of 326.3 miles in 2011. I have almost exhausted the supply of new trails within a reasonable range without an overnight stay, and 2013 was when Wendy became a big part of my life. While she likes to hike, we enjoy many other sorts of outings as well.
I started 2014 with a bad cold, but as soon as it let up, Wendy got me back out on the trails, helped along by some warm weather days. Limiting our travel time, we stuck with the closest trails to home.
Osage Hills
A series of close hikes (click image for slideshow)
On January 11 we drove west 20 miles to hike three miles on the blue bike trail at Osage Hills, where I confirmed that the Osage Trail from Camp McClintock has indeed been rerouted onto a parallel track in one spot, swapping designations with the old bike trail route. After I confirm the precise change, I’ll update my online map of the trails of Osage Hills State Park.
Thankfully the trees sheltered us from the wind, and when we turned east to walk along the north side of a peninsula, the mound itself provided shelter. Looking north toward the dam, we spotted a couple of places where the ice had buckled upward. Along the shore, wave interference had created a series of snow mounds.
Oologah Lake
On January 19 we drove 37 miles southeast to hike the Skull Hollow Nature Trail at the Hawthorn Bluff Campground on Oologah Lake. I knew the part of the campground with the trailhead would be closed, but we were able to pay a day use fee at the box and park near the gate to that portion of the campground and walk a quarter mile to the trailhead. We followed the main trail’s outer loop, ignoring the two smaller inner loops, and then extended our walk to 2.1 miles with a trail to a park gazebo.
After pausing at the lake overlook, where a cold south wind blew right into our faces, we crossed a footbridge to begin walking the perimeter of the hillside, walking through the trees near but above the lake shore. Wendy hears better than I do, and knew a Cardinal was around. I finally spotted him and he posed for a photo shoot.
Back at the trailhead, I noticed that the cow skull carving on the sign is rotting away. Across the road was a “Gazebo Trail” which I tried to take years ago, but couldn’t penetrate because of the huge number of spiderwebs. This winter it was a clear and pleasant walk over to the other campground area’s gazebo amphitheater.
I’m glad Wendy got me out hiking, providing much-needed breaks from multiple meetings each day of the work week, most of them concentrated on the design process for the big expansions coming soon to the high school where we both work. If only grading papers were as relaxing…
Our final true vacation day in Texas was spent visiting art museums and attending a New Year’s Eve concert in in downtown Fort Worth. (Originally we’d hoped to visit some of Wendy’s friends and relatives in the Arlington area on New Year’s Day, but weather intervened again with a winter storm headed for Bartlesville. So we had to pack up early on New Year’s Day to make it home before the storm hit.)
Fort Worth Stops (click image for slideshow)
Gloria’s at Montgomery Plaza
We left San Antonio early on the day of New Year’s Eve as well, successfully beating the traffic from the Alamo Bowl, driving 270 miles north that morning to Fort Worth. We had lunch at Gloria’s Latin restaurant at Montgomery Plaza. I enjoyed my fajitas and Wendy enjoyed sampling a chicken tamale, pupusa, Yuca, fried plantain and gallo pinto on the Super Special plate. The restaurant is in a huge multi-story building (here’s a photo by Dave Hensley) which was built in 1928 and was the largest building in Texas at the time, a Montgomery Ward store and catalog center. It is a Mission Revival building with 12-inch solid concrete walls and is now condominiums, restaurants, and retail.
Kimbell Art Museum
Standing Dignitary
After lunch we drove over to the Kimbell Art Museum, which was having a large exhibition of 100 works from the Art Institute of Chicago. We didn’t realize the scope of the exhibit and were frankly shocked to walk in and be standing a few feet from Picasso’s Old Guitarist, one of the most significant works of modern art. We’ve seen reproductions of it over the years, including slides in the art appreciation course I took in college, but I never thought I’d see it in person without visiting Chicago. Wendy was excited to see original works by Matisse, and she discovered Mondrian at this show. We overlap in our appreciation of the latter’s works, with me having a few old Mondrian prints I purchased back in college now tucked away in a bedroom closet. After the many fine “modern art” paintings from the early twentieth century which we saw at the McNay and the Kimbell on this trip, we are both spoiled.
Neither of us wanted to plod through the exhibit with the audioguides, opting to just dash through, weaving around the viewers transfixed for long periods in front of each work by the narration they held up to their ears.
We couldn’t snap photos of the visiting show, but the permanent collection was fair game. I liked Jacques-Louis David’s Anger of Achilles, although Achilles’ expression doesn’t register as anger for me. The Kimbell has a fairly extensive webpage on the work. I snapped Piet Mondrian’s Composition as well; here’s the Kimbell’s take on it.
Wendy liked the Mixtec Rain God Vessel, which was created more than 600 years ago, along with the much older Standing Dignitary figurine from Peru with its inlays of mother-of-pearl, purple and orange spondylus shell, mussel shell, turquoise, pyrite, greenstone, lapis lazuli, and silver. Kudos to the Kimbell for their great website descriptions of their collection.
Part of the permanent collection is in the recently opened pavilion designed by Renzo Piano. The main building is a famous design by Louis Kahn and the addition also uses concrete walls and innovative use of natural overhead light. I’m not a fan of Kahn’s monolithic style and am put off by so much bare concrete, although his skylights at the Kimbell are quite nice. For me, the best part of the new pavilion is the use of wood in the beams and flooring, warming the space, and the soft, natural, overhead lighting in some of the galleries.
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
I’ve enjoyed past visits to the neighboring modern art museum, but this visit was a disappointment. None of the visiting works impressed me, with most of them striking me as shrill, angry, obvious, and reflecting little technical skill. I was sad to see that the nifty Ladder for Booker T. Washington was no longer on display, but in its place was an interesting three-dimensional piece of stones and bits of glass suspended mid-air on uniformly arranged strings. Outside I could still enjoy Roxy Paine’s Conjoined.
The most memorable part of our visit at this museum was when a patron ahead of us at the admission booth balked at the lack of an audioguide. The ensuing conflict between him and his wife about this was an amusing interlude for us, but not for them.
Water Gardens
The Active Pool
Our next stop was the Water Gardens designed by Philip Johnson in the 1970s. I hadn’t visited this spot in years and it was Wendy’s first time to see the area. We were annoyed by the dearth of adjacent parking; we finally found a meter south on Lancaster, but had to scale the large walls to enter from that way. Clearly the design was intended more for the adjacent convention center than other visitors, unlike the more accessible and child-friendly Keller Fountain Park I’ve visited in Portland, Oregon.
We saw the dramatic Active Pool first, which was featured in the old Logan’s Run movie. I enjoyed taking the open steps down 38 feet to the bottom with the dramatic cascades about me, pouring 10,500 gallons per minute into the central pool. Wendy, who is always more safety-conscious than this testoterone-addled guy, found it a treacherous spot, especially for children. There’s a reason this sort of architecture is called brutalist!
The Aerating Pool was less interesting with its array of sprinklers; it would be much more popular, especially in summer, if it were designed for kids to roam about in.
When planning this trip I wanted our first New Year’s Eve together to be something special, and I found a suitable event in downtown Fort Worth. I never want to drive on the night of New Year’s Eve, so I booked us a pricey room at the Courtyard by Marriott Blackstone. This 1929 skyrise hotel eventually fell on hard times, sitting vacant for decades, but was gutted and rebuilt for a reopening in 1999. It is less than a block from Bass Hall where the evening’s festivities would occur, so it was perfect for our needs.
Due to its location, the hotel depends on valet parking in area garages. Being used to carrying a pack on long day hikes, I despise paying for valet parking; I’d rather just haul my luggage in myself and spare the expense and delays. Thankfully Wendy is just as willing to lug it with our rolling suitcases, so we scouted around and finally found an available public garage a few blocks away. We rolled into the lobby, which has few traces of the original design, and found our 15th floor room to be quite modern and comfortable.
New Year’s Eve with Steve Lippia
We had dinner at the Flying Saucer bar off Sundance Square, grabbing a table before the 6 p.m. reservations kicked in. I enjoyed my French Dip and Wendy had Honey Dipped Chicken. Then we went to the beautiful Bass Hall, with those impressive 48-foot-tall angels sculpted by Marton Varo adorning the front.
Steve Lippia gave a terrific professional performance, with many fun anecdotes and comments on the songs and their arrangements, and we were delighted when he performed our song, I’ve Got You Under My Skin. The Chairman of the Board came back to life to serenade us!
A Room with a View
We were too road-weary to participate in the later festivities at Sundance Square, but enjoyed them from on high when the fireworks rose into view from our hotel room, appearing from behind the beautifully litSinclair Building with its eagle finials. It was a perfect ending to a wonderful winter break in Texas.
On this day we had originally planned to be down at the Gulf Coast in Corpus Christi, but a rainy forecast led me to ask to extend our stay in San Antonio for a couple of days. The hotel clerk was accommodating, charging us the same rate even though our stay now included this day of the Alamo Bowl game, when rates typically jump upward.
Day 5 Map (click image for slideshow)
At first we were headed northwest toward some parks on the northwest edge of San Antonio, intending to spend the day hiking. We stopped along the way for lunch at La Fogata, with me ordering Un poquito de Todo, a little bit of everything. It was all tasty.
When we exited the restaurant, the weather remained very cold and windy, so we changed plans again. I knew we were tired of museums and wanted a nature walk, and it occurred to me that one can walk quite comfortably underground even in wintry weather. So we headed to Natural Bridge Caverns northeast of town for what would prove to be a warm and humid half-mile walk deep beneath the surface.
Back in 1960 a group of persistent (and cave crazy) college students discovered two miles of underground passageways leading from a large sinkhole beneath a natural stone bridge on the Wuest ranch. Wendy and I opted for the popular Discovery tour of the first half-mile. These largest known caverns in the state are a popular attraction; several dozen people were leaving for the tour every half-hour, and we had an hour-long wait for our group to depart.
We certainly got the warmer walk we sought; the cavern has 99% humidity so even at 70 degrees it feels much warmer. The last stretch was particularly hot.
We were pooped when we made our way back to the hotel through Alamo Bowl traffic, settling on Chili’s for dinner at the nearby Rivercenter along the River Walk. The next day we would rise early to make our way back north to Fort Worth for more art museums and a New Year’s Eve celebration.
We spent most of the fourth day of our Texas trip at San Antonio art museums. But first, having discovered a day earlier that our hotel’s breakfast bar was not appealing, we snacked in our room and then dashed over to the Alamo since we figured there would be only a short line for entry on a Sunday morning.
Alamo Plaza
Emily Morgan Hotel (click image for slideshow)
The customary photographers snapped our photo as we entered the shrine, but photography is prohibited inside. Wendy located the names of two Alamo fighters who might be her ancestors on the plaques inside as well as the exterior cenotaph, or empty tomb. The Spirit of Sacrificeis built on the spot where, according to tradition, the slain defenders of the fortified mission were piled after the battle and their bodies burned.
Wendy took a lovely shot of the looming Emily Morgan Hotel with her iPhone, and I was bemused by the history behind that name. We returned to the hotel, stopping along the way to admire the interesting front façade of the old building at 411 Bonham. We speculated about the Stars of David in the windows, and later I found out that it was opened in 1892 as a German athletic club, complete with those stars, was later used for storage by the post office, and is now a gay-friendly dance club. Quite a history!
Ohio-born oil heiress Marion McNay lived for decades in San Antonio, and when she passed in 1950 she left more than 700 works of art, along with her mansion, surrounding 23 acres, and an endowment to establish the first museum of modern art in Texas. Like Tulsa’s Philbrook, significant additions to the mansion have expanded the gallery space.
We saw some startling sculptures on the lawn as we approached the McNay, including an aluminum Victoria by Philip Grausman (best viewed from the front, ahem) and Man on Fire by Luis A. Jiménez Jr. We toured the visiting exhibits CUT! Costume and the Cinema and later the complementary Onstage! Costume Design and the Theatre. There were some beautiful costumes, including John Bright’s dress for Natasha Richardson as Countess Sophia Belinskaya in 2005’s The White Countess and Marc Forster’s dress for Radha Mitchell as Mary Ansell Barrie in 2004’s Finding Neverland.
A wonderful glass room off the mansion housed many sculptures, including the striking Portrait Bust of Paul Avenel by Aime-Jules Dalou. We enjoyed the orientation film on the life of Marion McNay, and wrapped up our visit relaxing outside in front of the mansion, enjoying the setting.
San Antonio Museum of Art
Detail from Boy with Cane
We next tried to see the Japanese Tea Garden, but it was packed on Sunday afternoon. So we diverted to the former Lone Star Brewery, now the home of the San Antonio Museum of Art. Among the paintings I especially liked were The Appian Way by John Linton Chapman and Boy with Cane by John George Brown; I love the expression on that rascal. The glow of the fire in Walton Ford’s John James Audubon – The Head Full of Symmetry and Beauty was lovely, although the subject matter is disturbing, presenting a buffalo hunt Audubon described in his 1843 Missouri River journal, with Audubon intently sketching the decapitated head of a buffalo, oblivious to the gruesome slaughter.
The museum has an extensive collection of art of the Americas, and I was interested to find Theodore Gentilz’s 1880s paintings of Mission San José and The Alamo, the latter depicted without the iconic campanulate, or bell-shaped façade, on the front of the chapel, which was added by the U.S. Army long after the famous battle in order to allow for a new pitched wooden roof; the mission was a roofless ruin during the 1836 battle. So if you see any depictions of the Battle of the Alamo with a campanulate on the chapel, that is an anachronism.
Wendy loved the care put into a Mixtec mask made around 1500 out of wood with a turquoise and mother-of-pearl mosaic, with long fangs. We both admired a Medicine Buddha Sand Mandala, one of only four sand mandalas in U.S. museums. This one was created in 2001 by the Drepung Loseling Monks of Karnataka, South India, and the 14th Dalai Lama granted permission to have it preserved.
Mixtec Mosaic Mask
We ended our day with tasty Italian food at Zocca at the Westin Riverwalk. We hoped to spend the next day hiking, but cold and wind drove us underground…
Meador Manor 
