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

Our holiday in Texas (part 1)

We have just returned from a holiday in Texas, during which time we spent nearly 5 days with Andy, Naomi and Crusoe.  So I have split my posts into three - before, with and after AN&C.

I took over 650 photographs and I have tried to sort out the most meaningful for the blog posts but each of the blog posts is really photo heavy.

Wednesday
We flew from Heathrow to Houston and picked up the hire car.   That took all day!  We drove to Bay City and stayed in a hotel there.

Thursday
We drove to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and along as near to the coast as possible.  We went to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, famous for its Whooping Cranes.  We saw white tailed deer

a blue heron

and a Prickly Pear

We did see some Whooping Cranes in the distance but sadly they don't show up in my photos other than a white dot!

On the road out we couldn't resist visiting Hoppers Landing.

We stayed the night in Rockport and as it was New Year's Eve stayed up to watch the celebrations in Times Square in New York.  Once it was 2016 in New York we went to bed - there was still another hour to go in Texas!

Friday
The weather had deteriorated when we got up on Friday - it was cold and wet.  And it didn't stop raining for 48 hours.   We continued driving crossing over the causeway to Port Aransas.  As we got to the causeway we saw this sign.

We did see a lot of pelicans as we crossed the bridge and assume that when it is really windy - as it was this day - that there's a real possibility that the pelicans will get blown into your path.  Fortunatetly they and our car passed unscathed.

It was our intention to visit Corpus Christi but we never found the exit from the major highway to the Downtown area.  It was still pouring with rain so we carried on driving south to Brownsville. Another 3 hours or so!

We eventually found the hotel and went to Dirty Al's for dinner.  This was mainly known for its seafood.

Saturday
We woke to another cold and wet day.   We were hoping to walk round the historic downtown of Brownsville but when we eventually found it, it wasn't worth getting out of the car!

So we continued along a road running parallel to the Rio Grande - the river that is the border between Texas and Mexico.  Sadly we couldn't see the river as it was a considerable distance away.

We eventually reached Rio Grande City and the rain had reduced to a drizzle so we were able to get out of the car, have a quick walk round and have some lunch.   This was the historic hotel in the town.

Here's our hire car parked outside some historic buildings on the main street.

We drove a little further to Roma- Los Saenz.  The Downtown area was full of historic buildings most of which needed some tlc.  This is the old Customs Building.

Here we managed to see the Rio Grande.

With Mexico on the other side.

Some of the other buildings in the town.

This interesting mural was on a wall.

As it was still pouring with rain we decided we might as well head back north.   We drove as far as Kingsville and stayed in a hotel there - when we had found it!

Sunday
The weather improved although it wasn't particularly warm.  Our first stop was in Goliad where we visited the Mission Espiritu Santo.

We then went to the Presidio La Bahia where we learned about the Texas/Mexico history prior to the Battle of the Alamo.

We walked round the historic Downtown area in Goliad.

On our drive to Victoria from Goliad we stopped for lunch at McMillans World Famous BBQ.

The interior.

We checked into the hotel in Victoria which was 5 or 6 miles away from the Downtown.  Then we went into the historic Downtown and walked round.  It was very quiet - in fact we were the only people there.

We were fascinated by these drive-by library book return bins!

We walked through the park and alongside the river.

Monday
Monday turned out to be a beautiful day and we were heading for Austin Airport to pick up AN&C.

But firstly we made a stop at Hobby Lobby so I could buy a few craft items!  Yeah!  Roger & I don't usually go into shops when we are away.  Then we drove to a town called Gonzales, famous for a battle over a cannon.  This battle was where the first shots of the Texas Revolution took place.

We were given a tour of the jail museum.

We drove long straight roads and hardly saw another car.

We stopped off in Bastrop for lunch.  This was another small town with historic buildings.  I had to keep getting used to the fact that by historic they usually meant something built around 1910.  Although sometimes there were buildings from the 1880s.

The guidebook recommended Maxine's Cafe and we were very surprised to find it was full of customers.  We had the last table.

There were some interesting artefacts on the walls.

We went round the town museum and then walked back to the car.

Don't you just love the idea of Canoe Livery?

We had covered hundreds of miles in those five days and managed to see quite a bit of Texas even through the rain.  My next post will be about the days spent with Andy, Naomi and Crusoe in the Texas Hill Country.

If you've made it this far, well done.   Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice