Category: Texas Hill Country

Armadillo by Morning

Note: For reasons to be revealed later, you didn’t see this post. In fact, once you’re finished here, please extract your memory and destroy it, Mission Impossible-style. Thanks for your cooperation. Note 2: I conceived the title for this post when I briefly woke in the middle of the night, one of the few times… Continue reading Armadillo by Morning

A “Relaxing” Weekend – Pt. 3: Paranoid Hiking

[Part 1] [Part 2] Trigger Warning: Here there be dragons. Or, at least, serpents. Elizabeth, you’ve been warned. Having survived the Great Coax Caper and the Putrid Possum Pestilence, we were looking forward to a relaxing hike on the newly-christened Horseshoe Creek Trail with The Nephew, his wife, and their dog Sophie. (I briefly introduced… Continue reading A “Relaxing” Weekend – Pt. 3: Paranoid Hiking

A “Relaxing” Weekend – Pt. 2: Close Encounters of the Putrid Kind

[Part 1]  Now, where were we? Oh, yes…I had completed a successful repair of a shredded coax cable that restored our satellite TV access, and life was good. Except…something was slightly amiss in the air. There was a lingering odor, a smell that seemed to grow stronger depending on which way the breeze was blowing,… Continue reading A “Relaxing” Weekend – Pt. 2: Close Encounters of the Putrid Kind

A Week in the Texas Hill Country

MLB and I spent last week at Horseshoe Bay, and it turned into quite a busy time. (Important Note: The following is the equivalent of showing blurry vacation slides from that trip with your parents to Knott’s Berry Farm to captive friends who reciprocate by never coming back to your house, even when tempted by… Continue reading A Week in the Texas Hill Country

Blue Bell, Buzzards, and a Band: Labor Day in the Texas Hill Country

Our long national nightmare has ended Our Labor Day weekend had a definite theme: Hills, Heat, and Humidity. Three consecutive days of 100°+ temperatures were bad enough, but when you factored in the humidity levels (~90% in the mornings; >70% in the evenings), even the slightest physical activity entailed copious sweating. Fortunately, we had plenty… Continue reading Blue Bell, Buzzards, and a Band: Labor Day in the Texas Hill Country

Dispatches from the Texas Hill Country: The Charred Edition

We spent another long* weekend at Horseshoe Bay, where the six-week dry spell was broken, albeit in an insignificant way, by a quarter inch rain shower on Saturday morning. Normally, we would have groused about the disruption of our plan for a morning bike ride, but in light of the drought conditions we were happy… Continue reading Dispatches from the Texas Hill Country: The Charred Edition

Fish Dinner

We were giving some friends an afternoon tour of Horseshoe Bay and were driving across the low water crossing where Slick Rock Creek empties into Lake LBJ when I spotted a crane* diving under the water, presumably in pursuit of a fish. Sure enough, he surfaced shortly thereafter with a large silver fish grasped firmly… Continue reading Fish Dinner

More Texas wildflower action (with 17% more bugs, too!)

The bluebonnets are thinning out in the Texas Hill Country, but wildflower season is far from over. The amazing fields of blue are giving way to even more vivid arrays of yellow, red, and white blooms, and not just from the typical flowering plants. Cacti are busy putting out their own displays of color. And,… Continue reading More Texas wildflower action (with 17% more bugs, too!)

Acquiring Culture in the Hill Country

During a recent stay at Horseshoe Bay we made a day trip to Fredericksburg, primarily to eat lunch at the Peach Tree Restaurant, but also to browse through the approximately 800 stores crammed into the three-block downtown shopping area. We didn’t anticipate that we would leave far more cultured than we arrived…not that that would… Continue reading Acquiring Culture in the Hill Country