Oh my God!! So here I am writing from the most amazing hotel room I have ever stayed in!!! Note to Sharon and Em: This place makes our Catalina suite look like a dive!! I've added the St. Anthony to my links of places we're staying... Here's what happened: I was looking for a place to stay in San Antonio, since we hadn't booked anyplace yet, and everyone we spoke to said to stay downtown. Having never been in the city before, we were nervous about staying off the beaten path, and since Cindy has this Disney Discount card, we can sometimes get 50% off at really nice hotels. So, even though it was more than I wanted to spend, I wound up booking a $95 room (with the discount) at the St. Anthony in San Antonio -- a great rate for a nice hotel, but more than we'd been spending at our normal motel 6 type lodging. But I booked it anyway, so that we'd be in a good area, and near the Riverwalk and the Alamo. We arrived, and when we got to our room, I almost thought there must have been a mistake. I'm sitting at the desk in a palatial suite with couches, chairs, an armoire, a dining room table, separate bedroom, and 2 walk-in closets. In addition, the mahogany furniture, ornate paintings and decor are nicer than the Beverly Wilshire. I can't believe I'm here. We didn't want to leave the room for the precious few hours we have here, so we ordered room service and ate at our table, almost embarrassed by our own decadence. Anyway free advertising for the St. Anthony -- I recommend it to anyone who happens to find him/herself in San Antonio. I think it's a little known travel secret that if you make reservations at a nice hotel day-of, you can get a bargain rate on the nicer rooms because they'd rather get what they can, than nothing. So, here we are!

This morning, we woke in our $39 a night room in Carlsbad, which seemed quite nice yesterday, haha -- and went to Caverns. They were awesome!! And going from the tops of the rocky mountains (14,000 feet in the air) to the caves (750 feet below the ground) in just a couple of days is almost unreal. We took lots of pictures of the stalagtites and stalagmites (spelling, anyone??), and we picked up some souvenirs. Then we hit the road for San Antonio, through more and more empty farmland. It's amazing how much unused space there is in the U.S. Cindy says she read that if you took every single person on the planet and set them a foot apart from each other, they would cover only the state of Texas. I'm beginning to believe it.

So through the farmlands of Texas, we made our way to San Antonio. We arrived around 9 pm to find this amazing room, and here we are. Tomorrow we'll hit the Riverwalk and the Alamo, and we'll hopefully see my cousin Mykl aka Zaius in Austin... Plus, the event I've waited for my whole life... we'll be seeing Southfork Ranch (the location from "Dallas")!! All for tonight. Have to go jump around my room!