Since the end of March means the beginning of the bluebonnet
season, my traveling buddy, Carolyn Gandara, and I decided last week to head
for the hills! In Texas, that means the Hill Country, the area just north of
San Antonio.
We took off one chilly spring morning, heading out Hwy. 290,
and found the first of many bluebonnet patches near Chapel Hill, as shown in
the photo on the left.
We stayed a couple of nights at a hotel in Fredericksburg,
TX, a small town known for its shopping district filled with hundreds of quaint
little stores and restaurants, most of which were built during the 1800s by
German settlers.
No tour of the Texas Hill Country would be complete without
a stop in Luckenbach, population
zero (except during cook-off events or music festivals), where “everybody’s
somebody”, even the curious roosters and lazy kitty cats, as shown in the photo
at right, sharing the porch at the post office (a.k.a. general store) with
Carolyn.
From there, we moseyed on down 290 to Wildseed Farms,
where we spent the better part of a whole day.
While there, we found acres and acres of colorful wildflowers, and acres
and acres of gift shops, food shops, clothing shops, and, of course, the restaurant.
After ogling the items in the gift shop and trying on a Texas-size pile of cute clothes in the fashion store, we wandered over to the Brewbonnet Biergarten for
lunch, cozying up to a warm fire in the huge stone fireplace—a comforting spot after
being outside on an unusually chilly March day.
We ended our trip with a tour of the LBJ Ranch and the
“Texas Whitehouse”, then drove over to the Enchanted Rock State Natural Area,
the site of a huge pink granite rock formation (shown at right). My son,
Jonathan, who now lives in Boston with his family, spent many hours rock
climbing there when he was a teenager. He’s sorely missing all his old Texas
haunts.
On our way back to the Houston area, we took an unexpected
detour (translation: we got lost), but were rewarded with even more fields of
bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrushes on our way back down Hwy. 71.
Eventually, Violet (my voice activated car navigation
system, whose advice we mistakenly ignored earlier), guided us safely back
home.
It turned out to be a genuine Texas Hill Country
adventure!!!
If you have any suggestions for fun travel destinations, send them to me: gloria@gloriahanderlyons.com.
