Day 7: San Antonio at last

Chris began the morning with a tour of the rock art at Seminole Canyon State Park and Historic Site.

The tour begins with a walk down stairs to the bottom of the canyon, then along the bottom of the canyon to the rock art cave. This canyon is created by the run off from the surrounding land during rain storms. The water flows into the Pecos River a couple of miles down the canyon. The bottom of the canyon is dry except for large puddles of water here and there. The cave ahead has thousands of drawings over thousands of years. The ash on the floor we walk on is 12' to 30' deep. In the ash are layers of ancient woven mats that are like rugs so the people did not walk on the ash.

Many pictures easily seen because the colors permeated the porous rock. Most of the art is the Pecos River style. We don't know what the pictures actually mean. Most are human figures. Some have animal-like features such as deer antlers or wings. But they are not doing clearly identifiable actions like hunting. The current interpretations are that these pictures represent the spiritual trips to the underworld of shamans, but these are only guesses.

We drove onto San Antonio. Our campground was north of San Antonio, 10 miles south of New Braunfels. That evening we drove to New Braunfels. We first searched out the Schlitterbahn which is claimed to be the largest water park in North America. Actually there are three Schlitterbahn water parks. The other two are at South Padre Island and Galveston Island.

While driving through downtown we spotted a marquee on the BraunTex which said “The Three Redneck Tenors” would be performing that night. We immediately parked the van and walked to the box office. As luck would have it, we purchased the last tickets. They were balcony seats. We returned to the van, changed our clothes and returned to the theater for the gala performance.

One of the three redneck tenors wrote this corny opera and hired three other guys, one gal and a band to put it on around the country. They recently recorded a Christmas album and will be performing at the Luxor in Las Vegas in the coming month. They really are good singers, but their acting and show is rather corny. The storyline is that a Kentucky Colonel-type promoter discovers three redneck boys with lots of natural singing talent, but no class. Nevertheless, he is going to make them stars. The rest of the play consists of their various performances from local rodeos up to Carnegie Hall.

In each performance up the ladder to success they wear different costumes and sing a different type of popular songs including medlies of TV themes and patriotic songs, Elvis Presley numbers and old country favorites, stuff the greatest generation would recognize, nothing newer than probably 1970. Most songs are sung straight, but they do an interesting combination of Ave Maria and Dixie. Many songs can be heard on their MySpace page.