Awesome Austin - Weird Austin

Wow, after a whirlwind tour of three distinct Texas regions, we arrived in Austin ready for a vancation. Philip and I happily moved into Bob and Sue's guest quarters in their beautiful home on the campus of St. Stephen's Academy. What a fantastic campus atop a hill surrounded by woodlands. I had no idea that Austin was hilly and so green. Here's a peek at Lake Austin.



Sue toured me through Austin's neighborhoods (lobbying for our move to Austin), which have everything from cute bungalows to graceful stone traditionals. I must admit that I really failed to capture the true essence of Austin in the few picture I managed to take.

This is a view of SOCO- South Congress Avenue where Sue and I had lunch with Jackson Hole expat, Jenn Ford. We spent a long time in the Heritage Boot shop, which has the best selection of boots I've seen. So if we move to Austin I know where I'm shopping.



Austin has retained many landmarks, vintage signs and a small neighborhood feel even downtown. It also has some great restaurants (La Condesa, yum!). Lots of food trailers too.



We spent one morning visiting the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Still beautiful even without the blooms.



All four of us enjoyed an evening at the classic Broken Spoke bar and dancehall. We even took a Texas two-step lesson. How many varieties of the two-step are there?






Philip, Sue and I made a trip to the Blanton Art Museum on the campus of UT. We skipped out on the tour and celebrated Jenn's birthday with her at the Buenos Aires Cafe. Next year Jenn, lots of champagne!



We really liked Austin and look forward to spending more time there. Thanks, Sue and Bob!



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Texas Hill Country

Our visit to the Texas Hill Country included overnight visits to Kerrville, Comfort, Fredericksburg, Luckenback and Bandera in seven days. It's the perfect area for biking, especially road biking, shopping & antiquing, and dancing. Oh, did I forget? Buying cowboy boots!

In Kerrville we stayed at the city park, Schreiner, which was well-kept and convenient. It's a quiet town of about 20,000 with a choice of moderate restaurants and chain stores. There are many miles of ranch roads to explore on bikes. See cycletexas.com.



Sheep and goats are abundant throughout the hill country. The rocky pastures are more suited to them than cattle.



Live oaks grace every field. Sadly, a fungus called oak wilt is devastating many of the old groves slowly changing the landscape.



In Comfort, we stayed at Flat Rock Ranch. The ranch is owned by Jimmy and Terri Dreiss. It has been in the family for over 100 years. Jimmy has developed 26 miles of single track for mountain biking. Some pretty tough riding... up and down hills,



between trees, over gullies and ledges and across lots of rocks. Philip had the pleasure of watching me take a header, bouncing on the rocks, gaining lots of interesting scrapes and bruises. And still it was fun!



Jimmy and Terri are great hosts. There is a small campgrounds for bikers only. We had the place to ourselves. It was a real privilege to stay on the ranch.



Onward to Fredericksburg for more road biking, shopping and eating. We had a very good meal at the Navajo Grill. We stayed at the Fredericksburg RV Park because of it's convenient location, but they sure do pack in the motorhomes there. Fredericksburg is a very cute town with lots of historic buildings. Our few pictures really do not do it justice.






Yeah! Our wonderful friend Jenn Ford came for a visit. Here we are hiking in Enchanted Rock State Natural Area.







We all went to Luckenbach that night. What's Luckenbach? That was my reaction too. Well, just ask Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. It's the best dance hall in Texas. We camped next door at the Armadillo Farm Campground. Which, incidentally, is not the best campground in Texas.



Our first house guest in the van, The General, fondly called Doodle.



Our visit to the Hill Country was not complete until we went to Bandera. It claims to be the Cowboy Capital of the World. We saw no cowboys. We did mountain bike at the Hill Country Natural Area. That was a tough ride for both of us and I was not smiling too much near the end. Still it was fun and the scenery was pretty.






Speaking of bikes. A motorcycle club was in town for the night and we crashed their party at the 11th Street Cowboy Bar. It was pretty tame.



We made the rounds to two other bars, the Bandera Saloon (ugh) and the Silver Dollar Bar. Is there one of those in every cowboy town? We skipped out early the next morning and made a beeline for Austin.



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Caverns of Sonora

Designated a National Natural Landmark in 1966, the caves were first discovered in 1955. After seeing the caves, Bill Stephenson, co-founder of the National Speleological Society declared, "Its beauty cannot be exaggerated, even by Texans."

The guided tour takes about two hours and covers two miles of cave. It was spectacular and unlike any cave we have explored.



Cave bacon.



Dog's teeth.



Unique stalactites.



Cave coral.




More bacon (think meat, this is Texas).




Christmas trees (stalagmites).




More stalactites.



The formations are white calcite... All I could think of was climbing through a giant cauliflower. I know, for me it always comes back to food.

The cave is open daily, just off Rt. 10 about 8 miles west of Sonora. They have a gift store (of course) and a small campground.



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Big Bend National Park

I have to be honest. I had never heard of Big Bend before our trip. Maybe I'm not alone...

Big Bend was established in 1944. At that time about 155 people were living there. The region has a long history of an open border with Mexican villages on the southern side of the Rio Grande, but all that changed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the future the park will get a border crossing. For now, the isolation has nearly destroyed the economy in the neighboring villages.

We entered the park from the west, spending one night in Terlingua. Terlingua is a living ghost town. Once abandoned, it is now a tiny village with a great restaurant and bar, the Starlight Theater. It's called the starlight because at one time it had no roof after a collapse, but people continued to use it as a gathering place for BBQs and live music. Today the tradition continues, however the roof has been replaced.



Big Bend has it all- Chisos Mountains, the Chihuahuan Desert and the Rio Grande. You can explore over 801,000 acres either by boat, on foot, driving paved or dirt roads and biking. It's perfect for road biking because it is one of the least visited national parks. We biked both dirt and paved roads, much preferring the paved to the wash board dirt. After spending one night in the Rio Grande Village campgrounds we discovered the remote car camping designated sites. Many of these sites are accessible without a four wheel drive or high clearance vehicle.



We biked and then hiked to the often photographed Balanced Rock.







Many of the roads were recently repaved...thank you stimulus dollars!







The view from Chisos Mountain Lodge.



The Rio Grande emerging from Santa Elena Canyon.






















The park has a wide variety of flora and fauna including black bears, mountain lions and the much feared tarantulas. The busiest time is March spring break. If you can, make the time to visit some day. It's well worth the effort.

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West Texas: Remember to Wave

We left Tucson with a heavy heart and landed late afternoon in Las Cruces, NM. Just a quick overnight to get laundry done, go to a $3.00 movie (The Social Network, which we loved) and sleep. Then Texas.

Have you ever looked at a map of Texas? Well if you do you will see how undeveloped the western region is- there are few roads in comparison to the eastern half where it's difficult to see the white of the map. If you visit West Texas you will quickly surmise the somewhat obvious notion that all the wealth in Texas is also in the other half.

First we tried to stop in Marfa, but it was late Sunday afternoon and everything was closed. So we headed to Fort Davis which was pretty much closed too. Maybe West Texas is just closed on Sundays. Well actually, all the towns are so small that it can be difficult to determine the difference between closed and open. However, this area is delightful with lots of history, green hills and golden grasslands. We camped at Davis Mountains State Park. Nice campgrounds with hiking trails and a lodge/hotel with a restaurant. And I saw a band of javelinas for the first time!



Fort Davis is the county seat and like all Texas county seats we visited it has a large, striking municipal building. In a town with a population of somewhere near one thousand, I thought it was curious that they felt the need to install turnstiles.



Fort Davis has 23 historical sites. The small "downtown" is well preserved with a cute hotel, a few gift stores, bank (below) and library. There are two markets for food. We shopped Stone Village Grocery, which had a surprisingly good selection of foods and a brain depository (think "Young Frankenstein", owner has a good sense of humor).



I toured Fort Davis Historical Site. The fort was established in 1854. I was particularly interested in the history of the area because I recently read, Empire of the Summer Moon, which documented the settlement of central and west Texas and the clashes between settlers and Comanche Indians and other tribes. It's a fascinating portrayal of Chief Quanah Parker and America's insistence on "taming" the region.



The landscapes are quite beautiful and many popular movies have shot scenes on location in this region. One filmed almost entirely in Fort Davis is "Dancer Texas, Population 81". Philip and I watched it one night just for the fun of it.






It got pretty chilly one night and we woke to a beautiful blue sky and icy crystal coated vistas.



We ventured out one night to view the Marfa Lights...if you're curious Google it. Marfa has a growing art community, but we were unable to return when things reopened (Wednesday-Saturday). We visited Alpine to check out the Museum of the Big Bend. It's a small museum located on the campus of Sul Ross University. Very well done and a great jumping off point for our trip to Big Bend National Park.

West Texas is an appealing, sparsely populated region good for history buffs, road biking and hiking, horseback riding and known for its restored, quaint hotels.

When out on these lonely roads, remember to wave to the the drivers. A tradition here. Just a few finger nod from the steering wheel will do, anything more vigorous and they might think you are a relative or bill collector.

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Tucson, AZ

Next stop was Catalina State Park just north of Tucson. Catalina is an impressive little park with a beautiful campground (best bathroom award) and trails for hiking, biking and horseback riding. If you want to see saguaro cactus you can satiate your appetite here in the state park without even going to Saguaro National Park...but we did anyway.

It turns out that the national park's saguaro population had declined significantly due to guess what? Cattle grazing. Yes, cattle grazing (cows + desert = not so smart policy makers). Thankfully, grazing rights were revoked not too long ago and little baby saguaros are popping up all through the park and the cattle are now grazing on the National Mall. Only kidding about the Mall, but maybe that's not such a bad idea.

We primarily went to Tucson to bike. Tucson is considered by many to be the winter biking capital of the U.S. There are lots of mountain biking trails, a city-wide system of bike routes, and Mount Lemmon...one heck of a climb. However, I ended up back at the doctors with a very bad cold and never ventured out on my bike. Philip did one trail ride which he rated just okay.

Tucson is a sprawling city with six-lane roads crisscrossing the metropolitan region and Route 10 bisecting the city. It is home to a bazillion strip malls and fast-food outlets. And it has winter smog. Maybe I was just cranky because my nose was stuffed, but Tucson did not rate high on our list.

We sampled part of the historic walking tour. As it turns out almost nothing remains of old Tucson. Downtown is pretty much a ghost town. We shopped Fourth Avenue near the university. The collection of eclectic shops and eateries provided an afternoon of entertainment. We had yummy burritos at the B-line. And their desserts are heavenly.







Our last morning in Tucson was Saturday, January 9. As we ventured to the Whole Foods, we came upon a significant traffic jam, helicopters in the distance, then lots and lots of police. We thought it was a car accident. Sadly, we had come upon the scene of the mass shooting involving Congresswoman Giffords. It was a sobering experience. We felt so foolish for having complained about the traffic jam as if our day was being ruined.

I will always remember one Tucsonian saying, "I can't believe they shot Gabby. She's the only one who makes any sense." Get well Ms. Giffords, may you heal along with all the other victims. Our condolences to the families who lost a loved one.

Sorry, readers. I am seriously lacking photos due to migraines, a sore throat and runny nose. Catalina State Park is a pretty park in a very convenient location. Do visit if you are in the area.



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