Focht Family Blog

We spent the night at Camping World and we were at the Forbidden Gardens when they opened so that we could go on their first tour. While waiting for the tour they have areas with displays of different items that were part of the history of China. The Forbidden Gardens were created by a man who decided his children were not learning enough about the history of China in school.

Here is a picture of Nathan and the kids by a terra cotta horse that was at the entrance.

One of the displays we looked at had examples of the types of architecture used. Here is Samantha in front of one of the examples.

While waiting outside for the tour to start Timmy decided he wanted a picture by one of the miniatures in the gardens.

Once on the tour the first thing they show you is the models of the terra cotta soldiers. Here are some of the full-size models they have.

Here is as big of a picture as I could take of the largest pit they have that is modeled after Emperor Qin’s gravesite. He wanted to have his army with him in the afterlife so they buried him with terra cotta soldiers. Each soldier was unique because each represented a unique soldier.

Here is a close up of one small section of soldiers with horses.

They even had a pit where all of the soldiers and horses were gray. They said when the original site was being excavated they found a section where all of the terra cotta soldiers had been burned. They think that Emperor Qin’s enemies found the burial site, took the weapons and burned the soldiers.

After we went through the area with the pits we went into another area that was a miniature version of the Forbidden City in China. Here are two of my favorite pictures of this area.

After the Forbidden Gardens we drove to San Antonio and checked into the Blazing Star RV Resort. It is a really nice park with paved sites and a heated pool. However, someone forgot to tell God that Texas is supposed to be hot because right now it is a bit chilly. We took a walk with Misty and took the kids to the playground to get rid of some energy. Tomorrow we are going to go to Sea World because Samantha has been wanting to go to one. The RV park has a shuttle that goes to Sea World but I think we will just take the RV. Monday will be spent downtown going to the Alamo, the River Walk and maybe the Children’s Museum. Tuesday and Wednesday will be at Caverns. We check out of San Antonio on Wednesday and will start heading towards San Diego.