San Marcos, Texas (between Austin & San Antonio)

After a wonderful few weeks in homes of generous Texans we packed ourselves once again into the small van and headed to San Marcos. We need to be in San Antonio by March 17 and were planning to do a side trip to the Gulf beaches area before heading to San Antonio. But we were put off by the travel time/distance to the beach area and the cold weather being forecast. Sure enough, after enjoying some balmy 80-85F days, cold and rainy weather has caught up with us. We're now cozying up in the van watching movies and hiding out from a 40F day while the rain hammers down intermittently throughout the day. (Local farmers are happy to see the rain). On our way out of Round Top we spotted that "Royers", the local (and somewhat famous) pie shop, was open. We’d been told we should try their pies so we stopped in. We debated for awhile - four pieces would be quite expensive so we considered buying a whole pie instead but couldn't decide on just one. Then we noticed "sampler plate" option on the menu. You get to pick 4 types of pie. So we ordered two sampler plates thinking we'd get a small slice of each of the eight types we liked. We assumed that it would be affordable while allowing us to “graze” over a wide range of pies. (Somehow no-one noticed the pricing for the sampler plate). Anyway, dinner size plates heaped with 4 pieces of pie and 4 scoops of ice cream were bought out! We had 8 servings of pie and ice cream!! The kids were in heaven and we all thought it was pretty funny until we got the bill -- $50. Yikes! We had to chuckle about what an expensive and basic tourist mistake we’d made (while all the time rolling around in piggy pie heaven). Of course, not feeling limited by one pie-ordering debacle, we also stopped at TWO places en route to San Marcos famous for their Texas BBQ. The whole family has taken to the wonderfully seasoned and prepared Texas BBQ -- but Doug has taken a real shining to it believing this to be a mark of his inner Texan.