Hill Country (Part 2)

I spent the night in Fredericksburg, which has to be one of the best towns in all of Texas. Main Street goes on forever with restored buildings from the 1800s now turned into shops, restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts and a park brimming with fragrant flowers in the town square. Early Sunday morning I drove to Enchanted Rock State Park before the temperature hit triple digits.

This is the creek at the park which now has no water, just sand. This is the second year for the draught in this area and the countryside is hurting. Nearby at Canyon Dam, the water in the lake is down 15 feet lower than the record low.

With all the dry river beds in the area, it was odd to see the flood guages next to them.

(Cute store fronts in Fredericksburg.)

Bummer...I don't think you can see it, but there are little specks on top of the Enchanted Rock that are actually people. In the foreground is my new best friend and pilot, Andy and his dog, who treked the rock with me. (And here my parents were feeling bad for me for not making any friends!)

The rock and the hills.

Nancy and the rocks and the hill.

I took a tour of LBJ's "Texas White House", which was just opened to the public this year, and his ranch. You could see the airplane hangar, his show barn, and drive around the fields. It was really interesting. Lyndon Johnson spent a lot of his presidency right here and a lot of foreign policy was made under this live oak.

There were a couple of steers in the show barn and this was was nice enough to pose for me. Those are weights on the tips of his horns to train them in position. I liked the fact that the branding is done on the horns instead of the hide.

It was a great mini-trip. But honest, folks, it really is hot down here.