[KevinFromTexas]

I remember back in 1996 my family and a friend and myself went down to San Antonio one very hot July day. We went to the zoo, the botanical gardens, the Alamo, the Riverwalk, the Rivercenter Mall, where I had an awesome hot dog. We also visited the Texan Institute of Cultures and Hemisphere Park. We didn't visit the tower, I think my parents balked at the price or something like that. That would have been my first trip up the tower, but I did end up going 3 or 4 years later and I try to visit it whenever I'm in town now. We also visited Sunset Station. My brother and I have always been train geeks so we wanted to go. We actually went inside the train station, (quite beautiful). I remember standing outside watching and waiting for a train, and finally a Southern Pacific freight train came through. I also remember being totally shocked and amazed by the other rail yard farther east on I-35. Kind of neat seeing how they unload cars from the trains. We live about a quarter mile from Union Pacific's tracks here in South Austin which do go down to San Antonio, so it was pretty cool to see where they come from. Trains are very soothing. In the cooler months I open my bedroom window and can easily hear them while laying in bed. We also used to have pretty good views of the tracks from our backyard across a field, though now there's a lot of bushy trees along the tracks which kind of hide the trains.