Disclosure

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We were lucky that our child's school had its Spring Break close to the solar eclipse, so we decided to visit Texas. Since the solar eclipse happened on the last day of Spring Break, we chose to do some other fun stuff before the big day.

If you're planning on seeing a solar eclipse (the next US one is 2045), I strongly recommend booking your flight the moment the date becomes available, which is what we did. The ticket prices continued to increase as the date neared and both of our flights were completely booked.

Here is how we spent our 5 days in Texas:

Day 1 - Port Aransas

We arrived in San Antonio around noon and then drove to Port Aransas, where we checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Alister Square Inn, which was a 4-minute drive to the beach or a 20-minute walk. They have a complimentary breakfast from 7 to 9 AM, but it's dine-in only - no bringing food back to your room. The room was nice, but had a fishy smell which we think came from a dirty fridge. We were able to clear it out by opening the door and window, but it would return every time we used the fridge. Of all the outlets available in the room, we could only get one to work, so we had to take turns charging our devices. It wasn't the worst hotel we've ever been at, and if they make some updates, we'd go back again.

For dinner, we went to Port A Pizzeria as it had lots of good reviews and we knew it would have food our child likes, but it wasn't that great, and for $13 a person, you're better off ordering from the Domino's in the area (which we did the 2nd night). Also, we noticed that one of their apple pie pizzas was undercooked - still doughy. The second one they brought out was fully cooked but proceed with caution.

After dinner, we decided to head to Horace Caldwell Pier to watch the sunset, as it was one of the few places you could park without a permit near the beach.

Day 2 - Mustang Island State Park

We loved watching the sunset so we decided to return to Horace Caldwell Pier to watch the sunrise. It was fun seeing the big boats and we spent more time looking for shells. We even saw a starfish and a washed-up jellyfish that hadn't shrunk in the sun yet.

We went back to the hotel for breakfast. After breakfast, we made a quick stop at the Family Center IGA Food Store to grab some sandwiches so we could have a picnic lunch at Mustang Island State Park.

Mustang Island State Park was a 15-minute drive from our hotel. There are supposedly showers on site, but they weren't near the beach as we couldn't see them. There are porta-potties in the parking lot. We decided to just head back to the hotel to shower afterward instead of trying to figure out where the shower building was.

This beach was the highlight of the whole trip. It's a shame it opens at 8 AM so watching the sunrise here is not an option. Tickets are required to enter, but it was only $5 per adult and children get in free, so $10 for the day was a great deal! The park closes at 10 PM, but we left around 3 PM.

I highly recommend bringing a picnic lunch so you don't have to leave early and can enjoy the beach for the whole day. Also, get there early if you want to secure one of the few picnic tables available. If you can, bring your own chairs and umbrella, though, for those traveling by plane, this is not a feasible option.

We went back to the hotel after the park and spent some time in the pool as our child really wanted to swim. Then we showered and ordered Domino's for dinner. After dinner, we visited some of the shops in the area to get some souvenirs and then made one last trip as a family to Horace Caldwell Pier to watch the sunset.

Day 3 - South Texas Botanical Gardens & Nature Center

My husband wanted to sleep in and my child wasn't interested, so I chose to take a quiet morning stroll to Port Aransas Beach to watch the sunrise one last time.

We had breakfast before checking out of the hotel and then made the trip to the South Texas Botanical Gardens & Nature Center, which was about 45 minutes away from Port Aransas. There was apparently an event going on that made parking take longer, but on the upside, tickets were only $2 per person so we spent $6 instead of $26 to get in. They were doing ladybug and butterfly releases too, which was a fun experience. The reptile house was cool, but unfortunately, the birds weren't on display when we went due to the rise in bird flu cases.

We grabbed lunch on the road before checking into our hotel. This time we stayed at the Best Western Green Oak Inn & Suites in La Vernia, about 30 minutes from San Antonio. It was the cheapest hotel we could find close to the city and it's one of the best ones we've stayed at. It was quiet, clean, and comfortable. They had a complimentary breakfast from 6 to 9 AM, which included hot items like sausages, scrambled eggs, and bacon.

Another upside is they have a coin laundry on-site, so I was able to wash our clothes. The only downside was the dryer didn't completely dry our clothes even though I had chosen the hottest setting. I didn't want to pay another $2, so I hung the damp clothes up in the bathroom using the hangers provided in the closet and they were dry by morning.

There was a McDonald's and Taco Bell nearby, which made for easy and cheap dinner options. The Taco Bell is like a 2-minute walk. The McDonald's was about a 2-minute drive and had a play area, which our child loved. I hadn't seen a play area in a McDonald's in ages!

Day 4 - San Antonio

After breakfast, we made our way to the San Antonio Zoo. It's a decent-sized zoo with lots of animals we haven't seen before - tons of birds! The coolest animal we saw was the okapi, and we even got to see a baby too! Some animals were not on display, like the jaguar, fishing cat, armadillo, etc, which was a little disappointing.

Another cool thing was they gave us bounce-back tickets for the next day, which was the eclipse day, so we could have gone again for free, but as we planned to see the eclipse and didn't want to deal with traffic after the eclipse, we ended up not using them. Tickets for the zoo are a bit pricey, I got discounted ones through my union, but it was still about $73 for 2 adults and 1 child.

We ate lunch at the Beastro, probably our most expensive meal of the trip, but it was sit-down restaurant quality food, so no complaints here! After lunch, we explored the rest of the zoo before walking over to their Giants of The Ice Age attraction. It was cool to see what the animals of the Ice Age might've looked like, but it's something we could've skipped.

We then walked to the Japanese Tea Garden because it was close to the zoo. It was quite busy on a Sunday afternoon and for a garden, it wasn't very relaxing. It was more touristy and lots of photographers. My husband sat with my daughter while I did a quick walk around, but I wouldn't go back again. I feel like it's overhyped for what it is.

Since there is free parking on Sunday, we made the drive to see The Alamo. We got lucky and found off-street parking a short walk from The Alamo. Tickets are free, but you need to reserve them in advance. Honestly, the Alamo is overrated. I went once back in high school, but since my husband and child hadn't been to the Alamo, we decided to go just for the sake of saying we went. There is a line to enter and once inside, there isn't much to see.

After The Alamo, we made another short walk to The River Walk. There are a lot of fun shops along the way, but as our child was already tired from the zoo, this was another, let's just go for a little bit to mark it off the bucket list. The River Walk is beautiful, but I recommend this for couples or families with older children because it is a lot of walking. There are shops and restaurants, but not much for young children to do so it's not exciting for them.

I think our child's favorite part was on our walk back to the car, we stopped for ice cream at Kilwins Ice Cream. The coffee chocolate chip was so good! There were tables and chairs, so it was the perfect place to rest our feet and they had a bathroom. It was the perfect way to end our San Antonio trip and we went back to the hotel.

Day 5 - Boerne City Lake Park (Solar Eclipse Day!)

Originally, we hoped to get tickets to a Texas State Park, but all the state parks filled up within an hour of opening reservations. (For this reason, I recommend booking a hotel months in advance within the eclipse path so you don't have to travel. Our original plans fell through so the cheapest hotels we could find were, of course, outside the path of totality, everything else was going for $500 a night!)

Luckily, in my search for other options, I came upon Boerne City Lake Park and they had tickets available, so that's where we ended up seeing the solar eclipse. It is a beautiful park, so it was a lucky find and just a little over an hour away from our hotel.

I'm glad our hotel offered an early breakfast, so we ate at 6 AM and left before 7 AM. Traffic was already more than usual and only worsened as we neared San Antonio. Luckily we were going to Boerne, so once we got out of the big city, it calmed down and we were one of the earlier arrivals to the park.

We started by exploring the lake, which is crystal clear! We got to see some ducks and I even found some shells. Our child got bored of the lake quickly and we moved to the covered playground, where she could play. We did some bird watching and then I decided to kill time by taking a nap in the car.

For lunch, we packed a bunch of snacks and filled up on crackers, granola bars, raisins, and Cheetos. It was not the best lunch, but we were worried about leaving sandwiches in the car for so long as we arrived a little after 8 AM.

The solar eclipse began a little after noon and we had to use our eclipse glasses to see it, but then the clouds rolled in and we no longer needed the glasses as the clouds filtered the sun for us, unfortunately, because it made it hard to see. We were lucky that the clouds parted during totality so we got a glimpse of the eclipse before it was once again covered in clouds. It was still a cool experience because everything went dark, just like nighttime!

All the signs on the road cautioned visitors to leave early, stay put, and leave late, but after the totality ended, we decided to head back to the hotel as we couldn't see more through the clouds. It took only an extra 20 minutes to get back to our hotel.

As we knew traffic would be busy, we decided to spend the rest of the evening at the hotel. I walked to Taco Bell to grab us dinner and we worked on packing as we would leave the next day.

Day 6 - Home

Our flight wasn't until later in the afternoon, so we got to sleep in on this day! I had originally thought about going to the San Antonio Botanical Garden in the morning before heading to the airport but it rained overnight and our child had enough walking, so we ended up heading to the airport early as we had to check out by 11 AM.

The San Antonio Airpot was not as nice as the Minneapolis Airport and the TSA portion took longer and felt more stressful. The employees kept telling people to keep moving, but that's hard to do when you need to wait for your luggage to go through their scanners and you need your shoes!

We were lucky the Minneapolis TSA had brought in dogs, so we didn't have to do any of that for our flight to Texas. We just walked by the dog (wearing our shoes!) and carrying our bags. It was a breeze!

We haven't flown in 6 years, but it seems removing liquid bags and electronics (phones, cameras, tablets) is no longer necessary, as both airports didn't make us do this.

Also, the Minneapolis Airport has bigger and better bathrooms. The San Antonio ones are not as clean and the stalls are tiny with hardly any room to bring your luggage in.