San Antonio, TX, Part I: Lulu's Bakery and SAS Shoes

From Dickinson, TX, we drove to San Antonio, TX, where we had reservations at Admirality RV Resort. We made reservations because Admiralty RV is located near the entrance to Sea World, and we were arriving on a Saturday. Although the campground emptied out on Monday, it was pretty filled when we got there, so it was a good thing we made reservations.

Admiralty RV has full hookups with 30/50 amp electric plus cable, free Wi-Fi and an Escapees or Good Sam discount. The roads, pads and patios are paved, but the sites are fairly narrow.  Most of the sites are pull-throughs with back-ins around the perimeter. The pull-throughs have grass between the sites in the front and gravel in back for extra parking. In spite of being near a limited-access highway and across from the entrance to Sea World, the campground is fairly quiet. The photo below shows our site at Admiralty RV.

The view looking down the road is shown in the next photo.

Margery has a former co-worker who moved to San Antonio recently, so we arranged to meet TR and his wife, Carol, at Lulu's Bakery in San Antonio later the afternoon we arrived.

Lulu's was featured on the Travel Channel program Man v. Food. Lulu's claim to fame is a 3 pound cinnamon roll. When the ladies in the campground office found out we were going to Lulu's, they asked us to bring back a cinnamon roll for them. Look at the size of that thing!

In addition to the cinnamon rolls, Lulu's also has a regular sit-down diner with a menu of burgers, fried chicken and their other claim to fame - chicken fried steak. TR was really disciplined and had a grilled chicken salad, Carol had a burger, and we both had chicken fried steaks.

The steaks are available in three sizes, the smallest of which is 12 ounces, and with traditional white gravy, dark gravy, or queso (cheese) sauce. The chicken fried steaks were good, but our cholesterol levels can't stand that kind of eating very often.

We had a good time chatting with TR and Carol and catching up with old times. The cinamon rolls are supposed to be excellent, but we never did get to try one because we couln't justify buying something that big for just the two of us. Too bad they don't make them in smaller sizes. Afterward, we headed back to the motor home for some TV and relaxation for the evening.

We goofed off on Sunday and watched the NASCAR race from Talledega. On Monday, we drove toward San Antonio for some sightseeing.

We got an early start because we wanted to stop at SAS Shoes. Margery started wearing SAS Shoes for comfort back before her knee surgery, and still wears them almost exclusively even now. She wanted to check out a new style in their on-site store, so we thought we might as well include the tour while we were there even though we did the tour when we were in San Antonio back in 2007.

The shoe store has a rustic style to it with several old cars on display outside.

When we went in to sign up for the tour, we found out there were no tours because of the customer appreciation sale that was going on in the store. The good news was the sale provided $15 off the price of any pair of shoes in the store.

SAS was started in 1976 in San Antonio (that's where the name comes from - San Antonio Shoes) by two men who were concerned at how shoe manufacturing was moving overseas. The partners decided to manufacture high quality, comfortable, hand-made shoes right here in the United States.

The shoe store at the factory has every style SAS makes in every size.

While Margery tried on shoes, Paul looked around the at some of the old cars on display inside the store. There was a restored Ford...

...and Paul really liked the old Buick convertible.

Then it was Paul's turn. SAS only has a few styles for men, but they recently started making running and walking shoes. Paul always has trouble finding shoes that fit properly and don't hurt his feet, but as soon as he put on their new walking shoe he was sold. His old pair was getting pretty bad, so he ended up with a new pair of shoes, too. We came for a free factory tour and went home with three pairs of new shoes. Cha-ching...but we did save $45 with the sale!

From SAS, we headed off to downtown San Antonio for some sightseeing. We'll tell you what we did in our next post.