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Fredericksburg, TX

2019-06-01 – Traveling West – Eureka Springs, AR

We left Little Rock about 8:00 am.  Arkansas is green…

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We were driving through the Ozarks National Forest…

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We stopped for a respite along the way… driving through windy, steep mountain roads is taxing, and relief was required…

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We arrived in Eureka Springs, and set up at the Green Tree Lodge and RV Park, a nice but basic RV park…

Then we drove one mile down the road to see the work of E. Fay Jones, an early apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, and a prolific architect and educator during his long career.  This is the Thorncrown Chapel:

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The interior is as spectacular as the exterior…

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The light fixtures along the “walls” are exquisite; the light is in the shape of the cross…

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As a true student of Frank Lloyd Wright, Fay’s chair designs are great, too!

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The rear is as great as the front…

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The attention to detail is astounding…

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The front door, repeating the diamond shape…

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The Thorncrown Chapel has won every architectural award imaginable… Just recently it was honored by leading the list of “40 under 40”, great architecture that has become iconic in less (fewer?) than 40 years…

The chapel is the dream of a man named Jim Reed, an Arkansas native, who bought this land in 1971 to build his retirement home.  Over the years he continually found strangers walking through the property enjoying the beautiful Ozarks hills.  Rather than fence them out, he decided to invite them in.  He and his wife decided to build a glass chapel as a place for visitors to relax in an inspiring way.  I think they have met their goal…

After such a beautiful place we drove to Eureka Springs and found the opposite:

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Eureka Springs was hot, noisy, crowded, and full of bikers and tourists.  There was some festival going on, although we never quite determined what it was.  The town is very historical, much like Bisbee, AZ, but the tourist factor rivaled Fredericksburg, TX, (and Graceland…)

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Eureka Springs was a late 19th century boom town which grew rapidly based on the water from their many springs.  All the quacks and snake oil salesmen came to town to sell magic water to cure everyone’s ills… The town suffered a bit when the Great Fire of 1888 burned it to the ground, but it was quickly rebuilt and grew to a population of over 4,000.  Today it has a population of about 2,000, but the historic downtown itself is nothing but biker bars and trinket shops… We did enjoy a good walk and we hope to return tomorrow for dinner at a highly rated French bistro…

As is our custom, we returned to the Villa for Happy Hours and a light supper; an enjoyable time was had by all…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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Lynda was able to capture a photo of a Cardinal…

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Some areas of the ranch were awash with colored weeds…

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Free range cattle were everywhere…

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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…

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

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

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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…

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And an enjoyable time was had by all…

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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…

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

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

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

Back at the Villa we enjoyed a beautiful sunset…

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And an enjoyable time was had by all…

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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.

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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:

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Historic buildings:

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Gunfighter’s grave:

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Abandoned train station:

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

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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…

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

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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.

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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…

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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!

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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…

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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…

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

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

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2019-03-21 – Airstream Caravans Travel – Day 9 – Carlsbad Caverns

Today we visited Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and, in particular, the Carlsbad Caverns…

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Carlsbad Caverns National Park is in the Guadalupe Mountains of southeastern New Mexico.   Approximately two thirds of the park has been set aside as a wilderness area, helping to ensure no future changes will be made to the habitat.  The primary attraction of the park are the Carlsbad Caverns.

We arrived at about 10:00 am and checked out the visitor center.  Then we headed to the “natural entrance” of the caverns… Along the way we saw these buildings; the stone buildings were built by park employees in the 1920s, and the stucco buildings were built by the CCC in 1940…

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Carlsbad Cavern includes a large limestone chamber, named simply the Big Room, which is almost 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide, and 255 feet high at its highest point.  The Big Room is the fifth largest chamber in North America and the twenty-eighth largest in the world.  There are other rooms and chambers which require special ranger-guided tours.  We chose the self-guided tour, since we didn’t want to crawl through small tunnels…  Visitors to the Big  Room can hike down on their own via the “natural entrance” or take an elevator from the visitor center.  We, of course, walked in – about 1 1/2 miles long of winding, steep paths descending about 750′ underground.

The entrance today is quite impressive, but easy to use…

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But in the olden days things were different.  The original explorers who discovered the cave had to climb down rude home-made rope ladders.  The first visitors to the new National Park in 1923 were lowered in a mine bucket down 700 feet into the ground.  Finally, by the late 1920s, park employees had built wooden stairways.  You walked down to get in, you walked up to get out… Finally, in the 1930s, the stairs were replaced by paved ramps, and the first elevators were added…

At this “natural entrance” there is a small amphitheater.  Starting in April and continuing through the summer people come at sundown to sit and watch the thousands or millions of bats ascend up out of the bat cave via the natural entrance in search of airborne bugs and insects.  Apparently it is quite a sight, although, it being March and all, we didn’t see the bats.  We could smell the bat quano, though…

So we walked through the natural entrance, walked the 1 1/2 miles down to The Big Room, and around the Big Room, seeing the sights.  Photos don’t show the scale or the depth of these spaces, but they are very impressive.  We mostly saw “decorations”, what the parks people call the stalactites, the stalagmites, columns, draperies, straw tubes, and on and on…

Pictures don’t capture the size of the space, but this diagram shows one area – the Liberty Dome above and the “Bottomless Pit” below…

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The caverns are dramatically lit, and the “decorations” are stunning…

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After 3 1/2 hours underground we were quite done in.  So we opted to take the elevator back to the surface…

We drove back through the town of Carlsbad, fueled up the truck, and returned to the Villa.  We snacked and had Happy Hours and a light supper.  Tomorrow we leave early for our travel into Texas to Fredericksburg…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

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