by About the same time that my German ancestors arrived in Pennsylvania back in the 1860s-70s, another group of Germans refugees arrived in Texas Hill Country and founded Fredericksburg, now at the heart of Texas’ wine region.
The manager of my hotel suggested that I visit the town about an hour north of San Antonio. Thanks heavens I decided to take the circle route and back roads instead of driving straight up there.
My first stop was in Blanco, Texas where an impressive County Court House is in the middle of a town square. The Court House has been converted into a visitors center with offices upstairs. On the walls were old photos including one of a long wagon train that back in the 1980s marched across Texas to celebrate 150 years of independence.
The shops on the four sides of the square were the usual, except for one: the old mercantile block with a historic jail behind it now wore a sign that read: “Uptown Blanco Arts and Entertainment” I laughed when I saw it. Uptown? Where was downtown? Across the square at the tiny city hall and water department? Or maybe satire still lives in Blanco Texas!
All the way on my drive up to Blanco I saw literally miles and miles of flowers blooming in the highway median. But doing 65+ mph precluded taking photos. Then I set out from Blanco on a narrow, winding 2 lane road across hill country. Again, meadows of wildflowers bloomed along the road and overflowed into fields nearby so I stopped to take a photo. And I kept thinking: “Thank you, Ladybird”. The wife of President Johnson, Ladybird advocated for planting wildflower meadows across the U.S. (More about her in another post.)
Like Solvang, California, a “Danish” tourist town in wine country north of Santa Barbara, Fredericksburg is German pretty much in name only. It has some sturdy stone buildings, a common building material in the area, and several Lutheran churches. There are probably a dozen wineries in and around the town offering tastings plus one excellent ice cream store: Clear River ice cream.
Other than that–nothing to interest me so I set off for Sisterdale on another narrrow, winding back road — where the speed limit was 65mph!! It felt like a 45 mph road to me so I repeatedly pulled off to the side of the road to let local ranchers barrel by me in their big pickups.
Sisterdale turned out to be like finding a pot of gold in the middle of nowhere. The historic Sisterdale Dance Hall and Opera house, built in the late 1800s, is still standing and can still be rented for weddings or other events.
Wonderful, Carole, love your wandering through this, now my state, to places I hope to see. Yes, wildflowers everywhere. Hope you got to see the bluebonnets ( now peaking here in north TX) earlier. And Indian paintbrush, orange in color.
The fields of wildflowers are absolutely magical! The blooms around here are mostly yellow except for a 6 block long meadow leading to the San Antonio Botanic garden that is now a sea of orange. In California we have poppy blooms but only in specific areas. Yellow mustard, which is non-native, is in full bloom now in CA. The legend is that the mustard was originally planted by the Franciscans as a kind of “bread crumb” trail to mark their path north.
Cool about the Franciscans! Carry on!