Caravans

2019-03-30 – Airstream Cajun Country Caravan – New Iberia, LA

Today we get to see a Big House! No, this isn’t it – this is the Visitors Center, across the street. The house is called “Shadows on the Teche”. Shadows is the house, named for the shadows from the giant Live Oak trees that envelope the house and grounds. Teche is the name of the bayou the house faces. (A bayou is a shallow, slow moving, muddy river…)

Here is the Big House, in all its glory…

The house was built between 1831-1834. It was occupied by four generations of the same family until 1958. Ownership was transferred to the National Trust for Historic Preservation one day before the fourth generation occupant died…

The house today sits on 2 1/2 acres near the center of the town of New Iberia. When it was built it was the center of a 158 acre farm. The farm was only as wide as the current property, about 325′, but it stretched over two miles in either direction. The family’s wealth came from their sugar cane plantation about 15 miles away. (Due to swamps, bayous, and water being generally everywhere, it took 5-6 hours to travel from this house to the plantation…) This farm was used for growing food to feed the family, their employees, and their 200 slaves. Fortunately, right before the Civil War the owner subdivided the farm with the intention of selling town lots and small farms. The war interrupted all that. However, after the war, they were able to sell the lots as needed to raise cash, and they were able to hire and pay their former slaves to keep the plantation going. In contrast, many (most?) plantation owners lost their land to pay taxes and other debts…

The grounds are beautiful, shaded by these 250 year old Live Oak trees…

Behind the house is the Bayou Teche…

We began the tour of the house on the front porch. In contrast to plantations in Virginia (Mt. Vernon) the front door faces the street, not the bayou. The stairs are here on the exterior, because interior stairs would block the breezes. Everything about the design of the house is intended to maximize bringing the cooling breezes through the house. Another unique thing is that the main living quarters are on the second floor, as protection from potential flooding. This house has never flooded, but it has come close. It is on the highest land in the area – about 18′ above sea level…

The first room we saw upstairs was the master bedroom and its adjacent sitting room..

The Living Room is in the center of the house, facing porches in the front and in the rear.

Two secondary bedrooms complete the rooms on the upper floor…

We noted that these clerestory windows are for decoration only – inside is a plastered wall…

On the ground floor is a work room and storage room… The Kitchen was in a separate building behind the house.

The formal Dining Room, used only for parties and distinguished visitors, is in the center of the ground floor.

In a corner of the Dining Room is a “cellarette”, where wine and other beverages were kept. Ice was inserted into the drawer below the bottles…

There was also an Office and a “Bathing Room” on the ground floor. The Bathing Room contained a bathtub. Other bodily functions were handled via a chamber pot or a commode chair… and slaves to empty them…

During the Civil War Union Troops occupied the ground floor rooms. Mrs. Weeks refused to leave, and she continued to live upstairs.

After the war Mr. Weeks was able to retain the former slaves as contract workers on the plantation and to pay them in cash, probably thanks to having the ability to sell lots carved out of the original farm.

The final owner and resident of the house was Weeks Hall, great grandson of David Weeks, who had built the house but died (in New Haven, CT) before the house was finished. Weeks Hall moved in around 1922. He never married and had no children. He added a bathroom and a Kitchen and lived in the house until his death in 1958. He had started to restore the house, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation finished the job, taking out the kitchen and bathroom and adding climate control to protect the contents.

After our very fun tour we traveled a few miles away to Rip Van Winkle Gardens and The Joseph Jefferson House… Joseph Jefferson was a wealthy actor who played Rip Van Winkle in live theater productions all over the country. He bought and built this place to have a country vacation home.

The house was an ugly conglomeration of Victorian kitsch…Fortunately for you, dear reader, interior photos were not permitted, so you didn’t have to look at it; however, we did…

The grounds (Rip Van Winkle Gardens) are beautiful…

We started the tour with lunch in the delightful cafe. We had seafood bisque and muffuletta, a sandwich made with round Italian bread and filled usually with cold cuts, cheese, and olive salad. The muffuletta is one of the great sandwiches of New Orleans and southern Louisiana. Food was great!

The fun history story here is that in the 1920s the house was bought by the neighbor, Mr. Bayless, a horticulturist. He designed and planted the gardens. In 1980 his son inherited the property. Having the same opinion of the house as I do, he had a new house built not far from the current cafe. Unfortunately, the entire property sits atop a salt dome, which was being mined, and oil drilling was taking place around the salt dome, which is quite common in this area. Oops! A drilling rig punched a hole into the salt dome and within a few minutes the lake dropped 150′ as it flooded the mines. The receding lake also took about 60 acres of land with it, including the brand new house of Mr. Bayless. Within a few hours the lake filled up again from the Gulf of Mexico via the local bayou. Today the lake is brackish, it contains some salt water fish, and all that remains of the brand new house is the chimney…

We returned to the Villa, and we had another GAM, where we met another five of the caravan couples…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

April 3, 2019 0

2019-03-29 – Airstream Cajun Country Caravan – Traveling to New Iberia, LA

Travel days are generally slow and relaxing, especially when we are only traveling 41 miles…

We left Breaux Bridge (actually closer to Butte La Rose…) and proceeded on the route. We are traveling in a clockwise manner around southwestern Louisiana…

GPS devices on the computer, on our phones, and in the truck all told us to turn right when exiting the RV park. Our leaders, and our caravan driving instructions, said turn left. Apparently to the right is a pontoon bridge with overhead clearance of 9′-6″ (most Airstreams are just under 10′-0″…); also there is a levee to be crossed – steep up, then a steep down, leaving a rig bottoming out at the top. Bad idea!

So we turned left. We stopped to fuel the truck and to restock the refrigerator. Then we stopped for a flagger at road construction. Then we stopped to wait for a coal train… This is why a 41 mile trip took almost 3 hours… But the countryside was beautiful. This is a prosperous part of the state, with many McMansions and starter castles lining the highway…

This RV park is part of the Sugarena, sort of a fairgrounds type of place. The parking spots all have concrete pads and full hook-ups, including cable. And no trees to get in the way of my satellite TV…

Shortly after we arrived most of the folks set out to do some shopping… very few trucks to be seen…

As a side note, when we were at the State Capitol yesterday we saw these water-filled areas next to the Mississippi River:

What you don’t see here is that for most of the year these areas are parking lots. There are floodgates in the levees that are usually opened in April to help relieve the spring flooding down stream. This year these floodgates have been open, and these parking lots and other overflow areas have been fully flooded, since February. And the spring surge hasn’t started yet…

So after a relaxing afternoon we gathered at 4:00 for a GAM – Get Acquainted Meeting. We will have four or five of these in the next few days. We met with five other couples and we, well, got acquainted. Tomorrow is our turn to host another five couples…

After the GAM/Happy Hour broke up some caravanners got together to play a little music…

We turned in early, as is out custom. And speaking of customs, here are a few pictures of some of our grandchildren

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And an enjoyable time was had by all…

April 2, 2019 0

2019-03-28 – Airstream Cajun Country Caravan – Baton Rouge, LA – State Capitol and Rural Life Museum

We boarded the bus again for our ride back to Baton Rouge…

Our first stop was the Rural Life Museum, run by Louisiana State University. It is on land that was originally a plantation; the family which owned the land donated it to preserve a record of plantation and rural life in Louisiana. While the buildings on display are not original to this plantation, they were moved here from nearby plantations and restored. The museum exhibits and the buildings were very interesting. Our tour guide knew EVERYTHING about these buildings, and he was intent on telling us everything he knew… It was a bit of a bore. But I loved looking at the buildings…

My only disappointment was that thee was no Big House here – apparently the house that was slated to be moved here was demolished one week before the legislature voted for it to become an historic landmark… We will see a Big House in a few days, and maybe more after the caravan is over…

The museum is set in a plantation-like setting…

These are stone columns taken from a demolished library at LSU. The scale is impressive. They are solid, carved stone. Many plantation houses had columns that looked like stone, but were, in fact, wood. (IE: Mt. Vernon…) Why plantation owners had this perverse desire to live in the Parthenon escapes me, but I just love houses…

The museum exhibit rooms contained many impressive mid-19th century funeral coaches…

The exhibit room was mostly filled with old junk that people had sitting around their garage and that they wanted to get rid of; they jumped at the chance to donate it for a tax deduction…

The Commissary or “Company Store”… Sharecroppers were paid in script that could only be spent at the company store…

The Overseer’s Home… There were three classes of overseers: the professional overseer, who was in a social class similar to the plantation owner; the middle manager, often the owner’s son; and the hired hand, an itinerant farmer with little training or skills.

These buildings were wood framed; soft brick, made on-site, was used as infill for insulation. It was either plastered over, or was covered with wood siding…

The kitchen… This would usually be directly behind the Big House…

The Sick House, or slave hospital… One room for examinations, one room for “lying in”…

Typical slave cabin… Two rooms sharing a central chimney…

Blacksmith shop…

Single room slave cabin…

Sugar House… Sugar cane was processed and boiled into sugar and molasses here. Sugar Cane was a VERY lucrative crop, but its processing was VERY labor intensive. There were over 1,000 sugar plantations in Louisiana before the Civil War. Once the slaves were freed fewer than 100 sugar plantations remained…

This is a cane grinder… The canes were ground up here, the husks were taken away and burned, and the pulp was sent to the Sugar House to be boiled into sugar and syrup…

Pioneer cabin… This is for a yeoman farmer, in northern Louisiana who was not in the same class as a plantation owner, but who struck out on his own to make his living as a farmer… Many of these farmers were Creoles – more on the difference between Creoles and Cajuns to come later…

Baptist Church, founded and built by ex-slaves in 1870; It was used until 1960, and former congregants still come here once per year for a “homecoming” style gathering…

Typical Acadian dwelling… This one was built in 1805 and occupied until about 1960. Note the exterior stairs to the attic sleeping loft…

Rather than bricks, the spaces between the wood framing were filled in with a mixture of mud, moss, horse hair, and manure… It was generally covered with plaster or wood siding…

Another Acadian dwelling; this one had three rooms front to back – a “shotgun” house…

A “Dog-trot” house has two rooms separated by a breezeway…

A barn…

Inside the museum is an artist’s expression of his feelings toward the legislature…

It was a fun place to visit – full of information about life in rural Louisiana in the 19th and early 20th centuries…

We were served a lunch of Jambalaya… Spicy rice with hearty smoked beef. It was different than the seafood Jambalaya I was used to…

Back on the bus, we headed to the State Capitol – the tallest in the union…

There are 48 steps, one for each of the 48 States when the building was built. Alaska and Hawaii have been added off to the side, starting new columns of names… Who’s next? The huge statue on the left depicts the founding fathers; on the right are the pioneers…

Inside the Grand Memorial Hall is all this beautiful marble. These flags represent all the nations that have held sovereignty over Louisiana…

At the far end of the hall is a mural that is obscured in this photo by the chandeliers…

Here is a close-up of the mural. I thought this was Louise, the woman they named the State after, but apparently it is not…

At either end of the hall is an antechamber with a stair for the legislative chambers… Very nice…

We were told of the bomb that was exploded in the Senate chamber in 1970. The room has since been restored to its former glory…

We took the elevators to the 27th floor – the observation balcony… This is the Mississippi River, looking north-west…

Looking East we can see the Governor’s Mansion…

The industrial north-east…

Barges being pushed up-river…

We were shown to the hall outside the governor’s elevator where Huey Long was shot and killed. They tried to make a case for some sort of mystery along with conspiracy theories; I checked it out on-line and nothing they said holds any water. He was killed by the son-in-law of a judge that Long had had disbarred… End of story…

We returned to the bus and to the Villa…

We had a drivers meeting – we are moving to a new RV park tomorrow…

Then we all car-pooled together to Pont Breaux Cajun Restaurant…

It was a real dive of a place, and we totally overwhelmed the wait staff… Even though we had called and told them that there would be 50 of us, somehow they were WAY under-staffed. But the music was good, the food was OK, and…

…an enjoyable time was had by all…

April 1, 2019 0

2019-03-27 – Airstream Cajun Country Caravan – Baton Rouge, LA – Governor’s Mansion and Old State Capitol

Airstreamers enjoy driving all over the country on their adventures, but one thing they don’t ever want to do: Drive into a “big” city!

So we take a bus…

Today we are going into the “big” city – the heart of Baton Rouge, the State capitol, population 240,000 – smaller than Irvine…! To get there we drive along this 18 mile long causeway: Almost all east-west highways in the state are on these causeways because there is water everywhere…

Out first stop is the governor’s mansion…

The mansion was built way back in 1963, after the “old” mansion was deemed to be inadequate.

As we waited to enter the grounds we saw this helicopter land…

A bit later a second helicopter landed…

I started looking around as we waited for the garden tour. This lake was adjacent to the mansion property…

This house is directly next door to the Governor’s Mansion, right on the lake.

According to the Redfin app on my phone, this house is worth about $275,000. We’re not in California anymore…

We soon started the garden tour. Sorry, not my thing…

However, when I looked the other direction I could see the State Capitol Building. We will tour it tomorrow…

Garden tour over, we were allowed to approach the mansion. As we walked, the Governor and 3-4 other men walked out of the mansion and down to the helicopter; it took off and left the property… (PS: maybe this is why he doesn’t seem to care about the horrible condition of the roads… he never drives or rides on them…)

As we were learning a little bit of the history of the mansion the First Lady and her people came out onto the veranda… After a short talk she and the other women walked away and left in the second helicopter…

The house is modeled after a classic plantation mansion, but it is a bit bigger – about 25,000 square feet. We were only allowed to see a few public rooms. I hate tours like this – I want to see the kitchens and the basement mechanical rooms and the servants’ stairs, and things like that…

The entry foyer or reception room contains the requisite center round table and beautiful flowers; it also has a four sided mural painted by Auseklis Ozols of New Orleans… It depicts scenes and symbols of all areas of Louisiana as well as all the governors who have lived here…

I couldn’t help but notice that the chandelier in the foyer was terribly lopsided…

Beyond the foyer is the stair rotunda:

The seal of Louisiana on the floor of the rotunda…

The drawing room…

The dining room seats 20 – even more than my Airstream…!

So we returned to the bus and we drove a short distance. We stopped for lunch, then we walked along the Mississippi River, enjoying the scenery…

Our walk ended at the USS Kidd, a WWII era Fletcher-class Destroyer. Not being a military guy I never knew the difference between destroyers, cruisers, tenders, and the like. Here I found out that a destroyer is basically a weapon destroyer, a defensive ship, designed to intercept and destroy torpedo boats…

After the Kitt we walked through downtown Baton Rouge. It is basically full of government office buildings and a few (very few) restaurants and hotels.

Out next stop was the Old State Capitol Building; it is a very forgettable building. They called it neo-Gothic, but it was just a fake castle with Gothic shaped windows. I didn’t even take a picture of it. It looked like something a winery in Temecula would build if they wanted to have their tasting room in a castle… It was built just before the War of Northern Aggression or the Civil War or the War between the States – no wonder we fought with each other – we couldn’t even agree on the name of our war!

It was occupied and looted by northern troops during the war and damaged by fire. It was rebuilt after the war. The only good thing about the new building was this lovely skylight above the center stair hall…

We did learn about Huey Long and his assasination in the New State Capitol Building – more on that tomorrow when we visit the New State Capitol Building…

By now we were exhausted! The bus brought us back to the campground. Happy Hours ensued and an enjoyable time was had by all…

March 31, 2019 0

2019-03-26 – Airstream Cajun Country Caravan – Breaux Bridges, LA

The Cajun Country Caravan officially begins today!

We are in Butte La Rose, LA, but the address of the RV Park is Breaux Bridge, so that is what we will call it…

Cajuns were French folk who had settled in eastern Canada, around Nova Scotia, as we learned on our Nor’ by Nor’East Caravan in 2017. The were called Acadians, but the English kicked them out of Nova Scotia two or three times, so finally they got the hint and they resettled here in Louisiana, and “Acadian” was corrupted to become “Cajun”…

Our leaders are parked near the entrance to the park. They have a very unique Airstream, called The Skydeck:

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Airstream produced only 12 of these motorhomes from 2003 to 2006. It is a fairly typical interior layout, except that instead of a dinette they have an internal stair that accesses a hatch to the roof. The roof contains a “skydeck”, with built-in seating , umbrellas, ice chests – everything you need to hang out and party on your “deck”

There were no activities planned for the day, other than watching the Airstreams roll in. It turns out there are five other couples that we have met on our previous two caravans. It was great to see old friends.

We did walk about one mile down the road (actually we walked on the levee, because Louisiana streets have no accommodation for pedestrians…) to the Atchafalaya Visitors Center

The houses across the levee were interesting… It was hard to tell if the levee was protecting us from water on their side or protecting them from water on our side. Water is everywhere!

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Houses were traditionally built up, leaving open space below to allow water to pass through and to allow cooling breezes to go by… and to keep termites away from the wood structures…

We arrived at the Visitors Center, where we learned a bit about the geography and history of the area…

We walked back along the levee; at 3:00 pm we had our initial meeting. Information books were handed out, lots of information was discussed, and a generally convivial atmosphere prevailed. Following the meeting was a gumbo dinner, provided by the staff of the RV park. This was followed by some door prizes, dessert, and brief introductions all around.

And we added our 31st state sticker to our map…

Tomorrow we board the bus for Baton Rouge!

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

March 30, 2019 0

2019-03-25 – Airstream Caravans Travel – Day 13 – Plantersville, TX to Breaux Bridge, LA

We pulled out of the vineyard at about 8:30 am. We stopped at the local Kroger for a few groceries and our Starbucks. We passed through Conroe, and continued east along Texas Hwy 105. The road meandered through the countryside all the way to Beaumont, TX, where we joined up again with the 10.

The highway offered typical roadside scenes, but there were some very nice stretches…

After passing through Beaumont we finally reached the Louisiana border…

There were water views everywhere…

As we traveled east on the 10 the roads got worse and worse. This stretch is notorious for being the worst interstate in the nation. There would be a newly repaired road for 2 miles, then junk road for 1/4 mile, then 3 miles of good, then 5 miles of bad, 2 miles of good, 1/4 mile of bad. Why they can’t fix it all at one time is a mystery… Finally we reached a causeway over a bayou that went for 18 miles. It wasn’t horrible.

We reached the Frenchman’s Wilderness RV Park, the meet-up location of the caravan. We are officially here!

We met several of the caravaners who were also arriving a day early. The caravan officially begins tomorrow.

We walked the park, enjoyed seeing the accumulating Airstreams.

This is a really nice park – lots of space, lots of grass, too many trees (at least as far as my satellite TV is concerned…). The weather was warm (high 70s) and a little humid, although I don’t think anyone besides us desert dwellers noticed…

The entrance and the office/store…

Happy hours ensued…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

March 29, 2019 0

2019-03-24 – Airstream Caravans Travel – Day 12 – Fredericksburg to Plantersville, TX

Sunday morning we went to the Holy Ghost Lutheran Church. Having been founded by German immigrants, it is not surprising that Fredericksburg is full of Lutheran churches. We selected this one for two good reasons: we could walk there, and it had an 8:00 am service…

Apparently Lutherans enjoy 8:00 am services much more than Methodists; this service was very well attended.

After church the mens group was having a fundraiser: drive-thru BBQ, smoked right here on the church property…

We walked back to the Villa and headed out for our drive to Plantersville, TX, located just west of Conroe, TX; along the way we stopped at the LBJ Ranch, both the State Park and the National Park…

The visitor center wasn’t very impressive; they were showing a movie in their theater; it was an NBC TV show that I recall watching in 1966. It showed mostly idyllic scenes around the ranch with narration by LBJ while driving in his white Lincoln Continental convertible…

We did the driving tour around the ranch, a beautiful place…

Lynda was able to capture a photo of a Cardinal…

Some areas of the ranch were awash with colored weeds…

Free range cattle were everywhere…

The “Texas White House” is closed for renovations…

We drove on. In Johnson City we drove by the Johnson family home, but there is not much else to see.

Our destination for the day is Bernhardt Winery…

This a Harvest Host site, so we parked the Villa alongside the vineyards; we will spend the night here.

The winery is a lovely place. Local wine club members come for a picnic and enjoy the grounds. We did a wine tasting.

They only grow two types of grapes here on the property. The clay soil and the humidity do not provide a good environment for growing grapes. The two grapes they grow are made into white wines – nice nose, but not much flavor after that…

The rest of their wines are made from California grapes. We enjoyed their port and their “Sarah”, a red blend, but we bought their Pinot Noir made from grapes grown north of Lodi, CA.

We returned to the Villa, and we enjoyed a bottle of their Pinot Noir with our happy hour…

There was a lovely sunset our our door over the vineyard…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

March 28, 2019 0

2019-03-23 – Airstream Caravans Travel – Day 11 – Fredericksburg, TX

We spent the day in Fredericksburg. After a leisurely morning we again walked to town and strolled the main street, checking out all the trinket shops, wine tasting rooms, and restaurants. Other than the National Museum of the Pacific War, this is all there is in downtown Fredericksburg. Apparently the town died in the early 1970s after the Walmart opened just out of town… Luckily, the town was able to reinvent themselves as a tourist attraction, and now it is a thriving place, with many B&Bs, motels, hotels, and guesthouses all around the town…

We are terrible tourists, so we skipped the National Museum of the Pacific War; however, we did note that Admiral Nimitz was born and raised right here in Fredericksburg…

We enjoyed lunch in a Bistro in the basement of a home furnishing store…

After lunch we returned to the Villa, noting the Saturday crowds in town:

This evening we went to the highest rated BBQ place in town. It was terrible…

Back at the Villa we enjoyed a beautiful sunset…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

March 27, 2019 0

2019-03-22 – Airstream Caravans Travel – Day 10 – Traveling to Fredericksburg, TX

We left Carlsbad KOA in the dark, at about 5:30 am. The road south into Carlsbad was very busy, with a continuous line of pickup trucks, people going to work in the oil fields. We stopped in Carlsbad at the local Starbucks for our morning coffee (Vente Flat White, Decaf, Extra Shot, Breve…) and we continued south on Hwy 285 out of town. This is where the drive got interesting.

Hwy 285 goes through thousands of acres of oil and gas fields. It is barely paved – maybe semi-paved. It is under construction all the way to Texas. It was raining and the road is dirty, with loose sand, gravel, and asphalt being thrown up everywhere. And there was a solid line of trucks in both directions: large trucks carrying gravel, sand, water, and fracking chemicals; medium size trucks, outfitted with welders, generators, pumps, cranes, and the like; and pickup trucks, carrying the happy merry workers to their jobs.

It was still dark. Looking off to the horizon on all sides were fires, burning off the excess natural gas from the oil wells; it is not economically feasible to capture the gas because we have such a glut of natural gas in the country, and until recently the export of natural gas was prohibited.

After about 100 miles of this most unusual landscape and traffic and dirt and rain we arrived at Pecos, TX. The town is totally dead. Apparently all these busy, well-paid workers don’t live here – they stay in trailers and motels during the week and go home (wherever that may be) on weekends. It is always sad to see these dead towns (they are everywhere…) but it is the natural cycle…

There were a few interesting things to see in the dead town…

Public art:

Historic buildings:

Gunfighter’s grave:

Abandoned train station:

Main Street; we never found out why these cars were here – perhaps this is a carpool parking area…

I went into the only active store on Main Street, a hardware store, and asked if there was a local diner we could go to for breakfast. They recommended a delightful little place, located in an abandoned Sonic building. It has only been open for about two months, and was a purely local place. I mentioned that they were not on Yelp. I don’t think they knew what Yelp was… The food was real and quite good. However the parking lot was so empty that people just parked free-style…

After our late breakfast we continued into Texas – due to the road construction there was no sign welcoming us… This is Texas:

The first thing to happen to us in Texas is that we took a rock to the Airstream, which blew a hole in the rock guard. Maybe we need to put a protective cover over the rock guard.

About 10 minutes later we took a rock to the truck windshield – another big ding.

We traveled east on the 10, and after a few hours we turned off the 10 and headed into Texas Hill Country…

We arrived in Fredericksburg in mid afternoon and set up at Fredericksburg RV park – a very nice place… As you can see, the Airstream is filthy!

We walked into town (about 3/4 mile) for an early dinner. Along the way we passed this hotel, with these flags; we always enjoy the Texas State flag, bragging of Texas’ one star Yelp rating…

The History of Fredericksburg, Texas, dates back to its founding in 1846. It was named after Prince Frederick of Prussia. Fredericksburg is also notable as the home of “Texas German”, a dialect spoken by the first generations of German settlers who initially refused to learn English. The emigration was in part the liberal, educated Germans fleeing the social, political and economic conditions that later resulted in the Revolution of 1848, and in part lots of working-class Germans.

The town was laid out by surveyor Herman Wilke. On April 23, 1846, the first wagon train of settlers left New Braunfels, encountering friendly Delaware Indians en route, and arrived at the Fredericksburg site on May 8, 1846. The first colonists immediately set about to plant a garden and build a storehouse out of logs, and a stockade and a blockhouse. The town continued to thrive for over 100 years as a center of this German farming community.

Fredericksburg in the 21st Century is in a state of flux. As each generation of descendants of the original settlers dies away, or moves to new horizons, the authenticity of the rural German farm culture of the Texas Hill Country communities also dies away. It is gradually blending with the customs of newcomers and being replaced by tourist-oriented concepts of both German heritage and the Texas cowboy culture.

Downtown Fredericksburg today is one giant restaurant, wine-tasting and tourist trinket store district. It was great! We had a lovely dinner and bottle of wine at Cultures…

We returned to the Villa and turned in early – it had been a long day…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

March 27, 2019 0

Adventures in the Villa

Category

2019-03-30 – Airstream Cajun Country Caravan – New Iberia, LA

2019-03-29 – Airstream Cajun Country Caravan – Traveling to New Iberia, LA

2019-03-28 – Airstream Cajun Country Caravan – Baton Rouge, LA – State Capitol and Rural Life Museum

2019-03-27 – Airstream Cajun Country Caravan – Baton Rouge, LA – Governor’s Mansion and Old State Capitol

2019-03-26 – Airstream Cajun Country Caravan – Breaux Bridges, LA

2019-03-25 – Airstream Caravans Travel – Day 13 – Plantersville, TX to Breaux Bridge, LA

2019-03-24 – Airstream Caravans Travel – Day 12 – Fredericksburg to Plantersville, TX

2019-03-23 – Airstream Caravans Travel – Day 11 – Fredericksburg, TX

2019-03-22 – Airstream Caravans Travel – Day 10 – Traveling to Fredericksburg, TX

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