Texas Trip, Day Six

Monday, April 13:

We got up around 7 a.m., and had breakfast about 7:30. It was a sunny morning, but windy and cool. By 5 p.m., though, it was pleasantly warm.

We left Waco about 9:30 a.m., headed for Fredricksburg. Sites along the way: the Horney Toad Harley Davidson dealership, and large patches of cactus beneath squatty, gnarled, mesquite trees. At one point, linemen for a power company were working among the cactus plants, fixing a line. I'll bet they were careful when they stepped backwards!

Sadly, there were only small clusters of bluebonnets along the way from Waco to Fredricksburg. But there were lots of animals, like herds of goats, sheep, and cattle. One breed of cattle fascinated us. They are black in the head and shoulder area, and in the hind quarters, but they have a wide white band in the middle. I looked this cattle breed up online, and they are called Belted Galloway, a rare breed originating in Scotland, that are adapted to poor pasture land. They are very striking. We'd never seen this breed before. Of course, we also saw Texas longhorn cattle, which, with their huge horns that span way outward from their heads, are fascinating creatures, too. But the Belted Galloways were the most fascinating to us.

Other animals we saw included emus and deer, horses and ponies, and even a couple of camels.

We missed our exit at Georgetown, because there were no warnings that it was coming up, so we had to backtrack. Luckily, we hadn't traveled far before deciding to turn around.

Hubbie pulled the camper onto the side of the road at lunch time, which unnerved me, because our unit was so close to the traffic lane that whizzing cars and semis created a wind that rocked the camper. After lunch, we discovered that there was a picnic area just down the road from where we'd pulled off. In fact, wouldn't you know it, there were picnic areas all along the way from that point.

Another annoyance at lunch time: when I opened the refrigerator door, a container of pie cherries bounced out, spilling into a door shelf and onto the floor...what a mess to clean up! But there were enough cherries left in the container to make trifle desserts, using cupcakes, individual cups of chocolate pudding, and whipped topping.

We arrived at Fredricksburg about 2:30 p.m., set up camp, showered and dressed, and then called my high school friend. Unfortunately, she had a church meeting that she felt she could not miss, so we weren't able to visit her tonight.

Annoyance: in trying to dry my hair after a shower, the hair dryer stopped working. Turned out, a campground worker was dealing with an electrical problem and had shut the power off temporarily. For a while, I feared that I'd have to let my hair dry naturally, which would result in a bed-head look.

For supper, we used leftover pork roast to make hot pork roast sandwiches, with gravy, served with leftover sweet potatoes, English peas, cranberry sauce, and one microwaveable baked white potato, split between Hubbie and me.

After supper, Hubbie and I went shopping for a few grocery items. Then later, we toured historic downtown Fredricksburg. No shops were open at this hour, but I got lots of snapshots of the interesting architecture.

Fredricksburg, a German town settled in 1846, has a population of just over 10,000, and is very much a tourist attraction. It's in the midst of what's known as the Texas Hill Country, where vineyards, wineries, and peach orchards abound.

We learned a few German words in our wanderings, like "wilkommen," meaning "welcome." I also learned to pronounce "Schmitdzinsky Lane."

Mother opted to stay at camp while we did a walking tour of Main Street. When we got home, we discovered that Mother had whacked herself in the head on a cabinet door attempting to keep Snoops out of the open cabinet. This resulted in a bump and scratched place on her forehead.

Later, we did the usual...Hubbie reading, Mother working puzzles, and me on the laptop. I tried a couple of times to get online, before finally succeeding. I was able to read email, but the WiFi access was so busy, that my replies wouldn't send. I could access my blog site, too, but I couldn't get the posting window to come up. And it was so sl-o-w trying to bring stuff up on my homepage, that I finally quit trying.