may 14, 2025

I woke up at 05:30 somehow, so we got ready and headed over to Franklin’s to line up!

We were initially planning to line up at around 08:00, but since we were awake we might as well not botch the plan.

Apparently the guy in front of us lined up at around 05:00, so we weren’t the first. People didn’t start trickling in until about 08:30 so 08:00 for weekdays is probably fine. Apparently some guy thinks it’s crazy to wait 4+ hours for food, but idk I guess I’m retarded.

Here’s the meats! 1.5 lbs of brisket (though they’re only two slices of point vs 9 slices of flat), .5 lbs of pork ribs, 3 sausages each of ‘original’ and ‘jalapeno cheese’, .25 lbs of turkey and .25 lbs of pulled pork.

Brisket > pulled pork > ribs > sausage > turkey

Brisket was everything i expected it to be and more. Spice amount was perfect (though my brother felt that there was too much pepper), melts in the mouth and great smoke amount. Usual reminder that I don’t think I was too far off from this when I smoked brisket ):

I wasn’t expecting much from the pulled work – has somewhat of a similar ‘pop’ in your mouth feel like the pork ribs from Terry Black’s yesterday. Everything else was decent-good; more to taste but obviously you primarily come here for the brisket. I should probably stop getting turkey as I just have yet to be impressed by bbq turkey by anyone at this point.

Next we headed down to Natural Bridge Caverns – there’s two caves with some very pretty rock formations. They’re formed by water dripping over limestone over many years (think probably hundreds of thousands rather than hundreds of years).

It’s a nice hike through the caves, although very humid with all of the dripping water. Would recommend for some nice views.

Next we have a small dinner at Iron Cactus along the San Antonio Riverwalk.

The salsa in the back has a little more flavor than the traditional tomato based salsa and was served at a warm temperature. For dishes we have Picadillo purses, which is like a Mexican wonton with meat/cheese inside, stuffed avocadoes, and Mexican meat loaf. I think the Mexican meat loaf was the most interesting dish – it uses mexican seasoning in the meatloaf, then instead of serving it with ketchup as you would for traditional meatloaf, it uses a tomato salsa instead – very fun!

Took a swing by the Alamo to get a quick peek at it. Not sure if we will have time to visit it during the day but it does look nice with the lighting effects.at night.

Time to sleep and visit San Antonio SeaWorld tomorrow. Hope iron stingray is good…!