Vacation 2017! Moonrise Retreat, Day One

Since I am turning 50 in August, Jav wanted me to decided where we were going to vacation this summer.  I picked a vacation in Fredericksburg.  Every time we have visited here, we have spent time with family and not really been tourists.  Except for the pre-Christmas trip we took with my brother's family 4 years ago, when we went into town to see the giant Christmas tree in the square.

I contacted my cousin who owns several bed and breakfasts in the area.  One of them is located on their farm, right next to the farmhouse.  I had visited them last year and fell in love with the land, the view and the B&B.  Our chosen dates were open and she gave us a great deal for the week.  It seemed our plans were falling into place.

We had some things in mind before we came:  Hike to the top of  Enchanted Rock, visit the National Museum of the Pacific War, another possible hike in a nearby State Park, dinner at our favorite restaurant The Altdorf, maybe visit the Old Tunnel where the bats come out to feast every night.  But Jav and I also wanted to relax, drink some good German beer and enjoy the view.

We left Fort Worth on Sunday morning, me with yet another stressful couple of weeks beforehand due to the health of my oldest cat.  Bones had lost weight recently, and the vet found him to have the beginnings of kidney problems.  He turned 19 this month.  Leaving him for a week was very hard for me.  But I knew he would get great care at the vet's office and tried to not worry about it.

Our Spelling Bee

We drove the back way to Austin, and visited the Bob Bullock State Texas Museum.  Jav had a fun time strolling down memory lane seeing the UT campus across the street from the museum.  They had a special exhibit on Stevie Ray Vaughn, Texas music legend.  His brother Jimmy Vaughn had donated tons of memorabilia for it.  There was a constant loop of his Austin City Limits performances playing on a big screen.  There was a guitar you could play while pressing various foot pedals to change the sound.  There was a drum kit on which you could learn a drum solo from his drummer.  It was very moving for all of us music nerds.  We ate a late lunch at Taco Cabana and the boys got a big kick out of watching the birds jockeying for position and scraps around our table outside.

We headed on to Fredericksburg in the late afternoon.  Google Maps is such a necessity in my life and didn't let us down trying to find the farm.  Even though my cousin and her husband were out visiting some family they left it open for us.  You can still do that in most parts of Fredericksburg! We explored our new home from top to bottom (the boys were SO excited it had two stories).  I didn't realize there was a full kitchen, so I made a grocery list and we went to stock up for breakfasts and lunches for the week.

My cousin returned and showed us around the farm.  They have 14 egg-laying hens, two horses named Jet and Beau (Beau is a retired race horse), a miniature horse named Moonshine, 5 sheep, 3 cats (sisters Goldie and Amber and Bed and Breakfast cat Dottie) and 1 dog, Gracie.  The farm sits atop a hill and has beautiful views all around of the hill country.  Everywhere you look are wildflowers, hummingbirds, hawks and other birds.  There are lots of places to sit on the back porch, and outside stairs leading to a 2nd story porch.  There's a hot tub and a fire pit for colder nights.  In other words, it's perfect.  After watching the fireflies in the twilight we settled in for dinner and later ate our ice cream upstairs to look at the stars.  We don't see stars like that in town, there are too many lights.

I told the boys about visiting my cousin and her husband's first house they had built in the country.  I was probably about 11 or 12.  They had just fogged the house for bugs and there were dead crickets and other bugs I had never seen before (they were mostly katydids) laying everywhere.  Then the nighttime calls of the katydids started, and I was full-on terrified to go to sleep.  I just knew they would all come attack me in the middle of the night and eat me!  So when Joel started saying he was scared from the darkness and all the bug noises and wanted to go back in, I could totally relate.   We are, at the end of day, total city people!

End of day one we were tired and happily went to bed, realizing that it didn't matter if we had plans or not.  It would be a great week just hanging around the farm.