Weekend in the Hill Country

It was time to get out of Houston. I am home day after day, seeing nothing new. Maybe I just don’t have the energy to get out and do things on my own. So I made reservations in Fredericksburg.

I’ve not seen a lot of Texas. In high school I made one trip to San Antonio, but other than that, my Texas traveling is limited — in particular, limited to house-hunting trips to Houston. For Christmas we got a subscription to Texas Highways magazine, which ranks the Hill Country and Fredericksburg as one of the more popular tourist destinations in the state. So, with a three-day weekend, the Hill Country it was.

Fredericksburg is charming — it feels like Branson in the middle of Texas, only with more character. The town (pop. 8,000) was settled by Germans in the 1800s, who said the hills reminded them of their native Germany. Today it capitalizes on its German heritage with lots of aptly named shops (Kuchenladen), hotels and B&B’s (Gasthaus Schmidt) and restaurants (Ratskellar). The downtown main drag is lined on both sides with quaint shops. It’s a good place to go if you need Americana Christmas ornaments; I, for one, had no idea that one could decorate an entire Christmas tree as an homage to the military. Lots of jewelry, folksy Texas art, and cowboy accoutrements. Luckily we were able to get by with just looking. Though we did enjoy the very authentic five and dime; haven’t seen a genuine dime store since I was a kid. In this age of Wal-Mart, it was rather refreshing.

We spent much of Saturday at the Lyndon B. Johnson Ranch/National Park. Very interesting; the tour includes the birthplace and the Texas White House (though you won’t be able to go in until after Lady Bird dies and it is turned over to the park service). A special treat for us — Lady Bird was sitting on the front porch. She is 93 and in frail health, but it was cool to see her there, even if no one came to talk to us (sometimes, the daughters will greet the visitors).

There’s a film, circa 1967 or so, that is shown in the visitors center. LBJ gives a tour of the hill country and the birthplace. Pretty cool. Maybe my status as a Johnson baby makes me perhaps a tad nostalgic, but I really enjoy this period of history.

The displays detail what he did as president. Yes, the focus is very positive, but the man did a lot that as U.S. citizens we still benefit from: The Great Society, Medicaid, school lunch program, head start, clean air act. It’s a legacy he should have been proud of. Yes, there was the fiasco in Vietnam. But there is so much more. What will GWB be remembered for, other than getting us into an unjust war? Depleting the nation’s wetlands? Jack Abramoff? A rising national debt? “No child left behind”?

Dinner Saturday night was at an outdoor restaurant; lovely, eating outside, under the stars. The girls were pretty well behaved.

The Easter bunny found us, and we had a nice Sunday brunch downtown. Then it was off to Luckenbach — Gary has us play the song while we drove through … well, more accurately, we got in about 5 seconds of the song as we drove into town. Fun bumper stickers — "Luckenbach: pop. 3" and "Everybody is somebody in Luckenbach." We walked around, looked in the dance hall, and contributed to the local economy by buying everyone a T-shirt. Kind of fun.

Buddy Holly was our soundtrack for the weekend. Maddie's a big fan now, particularly of That'll Be the Day.

And now we’re home. Such a nice get-away. We still need to see San Antonio, Padre Island, Corpus Christi, Galveston, Austin. Too many places to list here. But our Texas travel adventure is off to a good start.