Buckhorn Saloon in San Antonio

Last week, when my sister-in-law was visiting, we decided to hop over to San Antonio to see the Alamo.  While we were walking around town looking for something to eat before the Alamo, we were greeted by a cowboy on the street who was advertising the Buckhorn Saloon.  With a quick peek inside, we saw taxidermy EVERYWHERE and it looked so kitschy and ridiculous that we had stop in.  Turns out it was a saloon that had been in town since 1881 and it now housed an extensive taxidermy museum, American sideshow attractions and an unofficial Texas Ranger museum.  Golden.

After lunch, which was meh cafeteria food, we decided to explore the museum.  There was a TV playing while we ate that showed some of the attractions and Bonnie and Clyde's car was calling to us.  Now, unbeknownst to us at the time, the museums are crazy expensive!  But we definitely made the most of our money haha!

I don't really know why a lot of the things were there.  It was pretty random in some parts haha!

There were some pretty impressive animals.  I wish you could really tell the scale of these horns.

Antlers upon antlers upon antlers!  Each passthrough off of the main saloon had massive clusters of antlers hanging from above.

Most of my shots of the taxidermy kind of weirded me out when I was making my selects, but I thought this little guy was adorable.  It's weird...the Smithsonian National History Museum has tons of rare animals, but they're for scientific and historical purposes.  This museum seems a little more like, "look what I shot." :/ There were even some exotic animals that had been there since before hunting bans were in effect.

There were a few pieces make with tons of rattlesnake rattles that were wild.

I wish more of the shots from the fish room came out!  It was so dark in there, with water lighting effects, making it so hard to photograph.  I'm pretty sure most of them were just replicas, but the scale of things was crazy.  Most of my photos were just fuzzy pictures of fish I've caught in Animal Crossing :P

There there was this...

Creepy replicas and sideshow stuffs!  They had the water that flowed up, sideways houses that make for great photo ops and all kinds of optical illusions.  Think: bitty Ripley's.

After we saw way more taxidermy then we thought we ever would in our whole lives and after we played in the sideshow bit, we hopped back downstairs to the Texas Ranger Museum.  I remember visiting the real Texas Ranger Museum in Waco a few times for school and I was surprised that there were so many artifacts at the Buckhorn.

Passed the Ranger exhibits, there was a mock old-west town.  I've been fascinated with our country's pioneers and this time period forever, so even if it is a little hokey, it's still fun to imagine life like this.

And then...Bonnie and Clyde's car!  We were so stoked to see it!  When Andy and I went over to take a photo next to it, though, I noticed something.  The bullet holes were painted on >_<  When were looking around the exhibit there was nothing about the car belonging to them, just random facts about the couple and their exploits.  Haha!  Oh, well!

So, is the Buckhorn Saloon a kitschy tourist trap?  Yes.  Is it also filled with ridiculous stuff to peep and piece of genuine San Antonio history?  Yes.  As silly as it was, I'm so glad we went!