Our flights to San Antonio were smooth and uneventful.  At our brief stop in Phoenix, Courtney bought $45 of cactus candy to give to her friends upon our return.  Cactus candy was something that I had always gotten for our kids back when I used to visit Phoenix for business.  Courtney still remembers cactus candy fondly.

I wish getting out of the San Antonio airport had been easy, but it was not – I stood in the car rental line for over an hour.  Dollar Rent-a-Car was out of cars so they were only handing them out as they came in.  In the past, this meant that whatever car was available is what you got, and it was usually a serious upgrade.  Not so today – there were enough people requesting full-sized cars that we had to wait for our mid-size.  We got a Chevy Cruise.

First stop was to eat lunch.  I had heard good things about a Mediterranean place near the Lackland Valley High gate, so we went there.   Good choice, the food was excellent!  We went to the visitor’s office afterwards to get our passes, but it turned out that the pieces of paper Jeffrey had sent us WERE the passes.

Our hotel was really set up for this graduation weekend.  The guy who greeted us told us just about everything we would need to succeed in this coming week.  He also gave us a room that had a view of Lackland base… except it didn’t; it had a view of a wall and a vending machine.  We laughed about our “million dollar view” all week.

In the evening, we met up with Barbara’s parents who had driven from Arkansas and were now staying on base at the Air Force Lodge.  As an ex-Air Force person, Grandpa was allowed to do this.  We could too, since we were here for the graduation, but our accommodations would have been pretty rustic, unlike the digs Barbara’s parents were able to get, so we stayed off-base.  We wanted to go to the mall near our hotel, but the mall turned out to be a strip mall, and all the places were closed.  I had picked out a top-rated restaurant in that mall for tonight’s meal, but no one was hungry.  Barbara and her parents went back to the Lodge to catch up.  Courtney and I went to Arby’s for dinner, and then back to our hotel so Courtney could start doing all the homework her teachers had assigned here during her week off from school.