HILL COUNTRY SIGHTSEEING

On Friday, I went off on my own to do some sightseeing that was of no interest to Odel.

I started in Comfort, Texas. We had visited Comfort briefly as we passed through Texas heading for Memphis, and I wanted to spend more time exploring there. I am particularly attracted to their history - Comfort was established and settled by German "Free Thinkers", emigrants who were interested in freedom from religion. The first church was not built there for forty years, quite different from the other Hill Country communities established by German emigrants.

Now it is a small, quiet town of B & B's, antique stores, a cafe, a bakery, and a couple gift shops.

Many, many, of the buildings in Comfort date back to the mid 1800's, and are built of the locally quarried stone, a lovely, solid, clean look that I find particularly appealing.

After strolling around Comfort to my heart's content, I headed back to Fredericksburg, destination Wildseed Farms. This is the largest wildflower farm in the nation, and I didn't want to leave the Hill Country without seeing it.


The red poppy field was in full, fantastic bloom, and so were the rows of Icelandic Poppies, but most of the other test plots are weeks from blooming. At any other time, I would have been impressed, but I have been completely spoiled by the unparalleled natural wildflower displays we have seen driving along just about any road from one Hill Country town to the next.

No manicured display, no matter how large, brilliant, and beautiful, can match the pool of Bluebonnets we saw in the valley of the Willow City Loop.


My last stop was the first fort built on the Texas frontier, in the 1860's, I think - which was in use for about four years, then out of service as the frontier moved on. The head of the German emigrant community in Fredericksburg so successfully negotiated with the Comanches that the settlers did not need the protection of the fort.

This is a very typical scene in this area: an old, stone home, covered porches on two sides, a shapely oak tree for shade. These buildings lookslike they would last forever.