Saturday 16 January 2016

Road Trip - sort of! (Texas pt 2)

We had collected Andy, Naomi & Crusoe from the airport and then driven to the cottage I had booked for us in Fredericksburg.

And what a cottage it was!

This was our bedroom - kingsized bed and ensuite.

The dining room

The lounge - there was also a television room.

The kitchen.

A,N&C shared a large bedroom with kingsized bed and private bathroom.  There was also a hot tub outside which we didn't use and a laundry room.

And this is what it looked like in the daylight the next day.  It's called Holly's Haus.

Be warned!
This is a very long post with lots of photographs.

Tuesday
We woke up to a beautiful day.  Beautiful sunshine and blue sky but still a lowish temperature.  We drove to Enchanted Rock and climbed to the top.



It was quite steep in parts.


But it was worth it for the views.

Here's the rest of the party - coming up

And going back down!

We drove on to Llano where we stopped for lunch.

The main street

A great name for a shop

Then we took the long way home via Kingsland, Marble Falls and Johnson City.   This last town was a large sprawling mass of highway and stores along the main highway but we chanced on the historic downtown.



On our way back to Fredericksburg we stopped off at the L. B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site.  It was almost closing time so we were only allowed to visit the historic farm. We saw deer in the parkland

and introduced Crusoe to a pig.


In the evening we went to a German restaurant and Crusoe helped Naomi choose her meal.


Wednesday
Sadly the weather deteriorated overnight and it was foggy and drizzling.  We visited the Pioneer Museum in Fredericksburg where they had brought several historic houses from other sites.

This is a Sunday House.  It only has one room and families who lived a long way out of town owned them so that they could arrive in town on Saturday to do their shopping and go to church on Sunday before returning home.


This was a local school room.

A log cabin

A collection of barbed wire!


And the shelves inside the store.

We had a walk around Fredericksburg





before going to lunch at Cranky Frank's BBQ

In the afternoon we drove around through Comfort to a place called Luckenbach - whose claim to fame in the guide book was that it had a population of 3.  Whether or not that's true it really only has two buildings - the old Post Office and General Store


and a dance hall.  It is famous for its country music events.  We stopped for a drink and listened to a guy singing.


Thursday
The good weather returned on Thursday and we packed up our belongings and drove through Kerrville to Bandera.

Views on the way


And of course, Bandera had an historic downtown.



And an amazing boot store

I would really have liked to buy these.  However Roger thought people would laugh at me and in any case they were $359 (£250) so they stayed on the shelf.

During the holiday I had been looking out for Texas Longhorn cattle to photograph and although we had seen a few it always tended to be when we were doing 70mph past them so this was the nearest I got to one.

We had lunch in a John Wayne themed restaurant!

I popped into the quilt shop and was allowed to photograph this quilt.

Then we went to visit the Frontier Times museum which was a real hodge podge of stuff.



More barbed wire


A saddle

We drove to San Antonio and after a short rest we walked into the Riverwalk area.

The river had been drained on the previous Monday so that it could be cleaned and was not supposed to be finished until Saturday but by the time we got there on Thursday it was already being filled up again.


Andy & Naomi treated us to a lovely meal as our Christmas present.

Friday
Our last day with the Hopper Juniors.  We walked back to the Riverwalk and found that it was now full.






We walked to the Alamo where we had an audio self-guided tour of the inside and a guided tour of the battlefield outside.


A guide explaining about 19th century medicine.

And a couple of set extras!

It was now time to drive back to Austin airport as A,N&C were returning to Australia.  We stopped off at a German restaurant in New Braunfels.

Amazingly there was a roundabout (traffic island) in the town - a rare occurrence in my US experience.

It was sad to leave them at the airport but we had a fabulous time with them for these few days.

So now we were on our own and still had 3 full days in Texas.  But more of that in my next post.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice



3 comments:

  1. Great to see all the old western buildings and glad you could meet up with your gang for this trip.

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  2. Now I have finally seen Lukenbach, Texas. It was a famous country song for awhile many years ago and I don't even remember who sings it. Thanks for the great pictures again - your second job could be a travel guide.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I so want to go to San Antonio!
    - Lovely photos!
    [and we have at least four round abouts here in Huntsville - that I know of....]

    ReplyDelete

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