Texas Hill Country

After checking out Austin a little more, we headed west, deeper into the Texas Hill Country with the goal of spending the night in Fredericksburg, an historic German community with unique stone architecture.

Hill Country is a lush, green region of dense scrubby growth on a sedementary limestone base webbed with streams and rivers. It rains a lot, which explains the green and the water, but it doesn't get all that hot or cold, and it's not humid like Houston. Consequently, more people are discovering it. Housing developments are starting to pop up like wildflowers after a rain in the Spring.

Property values in this area are bargain. For $150,000 you can get a 2500 square foot, two story home in this area. My son's 900 square foot condo in San Diego is worth over $500,000, to give you a comparison.

We took a detour to hike along the Pedernales River to a series of falls or cataracts carved out of the bedrock.

It was a fairly rugged hike over unimproved trail, which my wife Romana declared the worst she’d ever been on in her life. We even lost the trail at one point and had to navigate by dead reckoning without any GPS, if you can imagine. I had brought my GPS watch just for such occasions, but forgot to put it on.

Along the trail, we saw several exciting species of birds. I’ve never seen so many cardinals in all different stages of development. They are one of my favorite birds. Another favorite that is more beautiful than a diamond glistening in the sun is the painted bunting. I can only remember seeing two others. What a treat. We saw a couple of ladder backed woodpeckers and heard more. But, we have yet to see the elusive scissor tail flycatcher, which is the Texas state bird. I hope we’ll see at least one in its erratic flight pattern before we leave Texas behind.

In Johnson City, a small burg not far from Fredericksburg, we visited Lyndon Johnson’s modest boyhood home. On a previous visit we visited his ranch, which was quite a bit more impressive except for his raising exotic African range animals for his friends to shoot.

Finally reaching Fredericksburg, we had lunch in a German restaurant and explored the town.

The highlight of the day was in the evening, at dusk, as nightfall rapidly descended upon us, outside an old railroad tunnel, out in the boonies, about twelve miles east of Fredericksburg. With little light left in the sky, after the fireflies had already started sparking, the first bats begin emerging from their diurnal domicile. At first, there was just one or two zig zagging madly. Then more and more and more and more until it was like a swarm of angry bees. It was like watching popcorn pop in an air popper when at first just one or two kernels burst open and start swirling around soon followed by others until the whole container is a roiling vortex.

I thought it would be a feeding frenzy on the poor fireflies, but, apparently bats do not feed on fireflies, to my relief--I really like fireflies. Why don’t we have fireflies in Idaho? Maybe I’ll catch some and import them, along with some armadillos and turtles. I’ve yet to see an armadillo on this trip. Maybe they all got barbecued.

Our plan tomorrow is the meander back to Houston, visit one of the incredible Fiesta Mexican supermarkets, buy something exotic that Matt and I will cook for dinner at my other son Tim’s house. Terry and Kimberley will be there too.

Keep connected <<>>