TEXAS HILL COUNTRY IN EARLY SPRING

Traveling from west to east in Texas, you know you are leaving the arid southwest behind when at last you come to a "wet" river, the Llano... and slowly, slowly, the landscape changes to trees, the woodlands thicken, the road rises and falls, and you approach Texas Hill Country.

We arrived in Kerrville on a lovely, sunny, spring day, set up Scoopy at the Kerrville Elks lodge, and took off to walk in Louise Hays Park, where this blooming Redbud could not be ignored.




On Thursday, we took a day off from RV travel. Instead, we explored a small corner of the Hill Country, driving north from Kerrville to Fredericksburg, the best known and most visited town in the Hill Country.

It's Spring Break around here, and Fredericksburg was jam-packed. We bought a book, tasted some Texas wine in a wine bar, dodged tourists, ate a great lunch at the Bejas Grill & Cantina, then took off for the back roads and a bit of peace and quiet.

This odd structure is a bat roost, built in the early 1900's to attract bats to help control the mosquito population (along with malaria and yellow fever). It is near the small town of Comfort, established in 1854 by German "free thinkers" escaping religious persecution (unlike the Germans who established Fredericksburg and other Hill Country towns, who were escaping unemployment) - it had no churches for the first 40 years of its existance.

I could stay here for days! In one day of sightseeing, I saw enough of interest to cover another three or four days - and that is a tiny, tiny fraction of all we could do around here. Well, there is NO TIME now, so we will just have to come back!

When we got home, Luna was ready to play outside. After strolling the grounds for a few minutes, she settled near this cinder block... then proceeded to spend the next ten minutes thoroughly rubbing it with her entire body. I don't know what it smelled like, but she fell in LOVE!