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.

Round Top, Texas - east of Austin

Arriving at a beautiful 40-acre property with its own guest house, lake and go-cart to drive around in has been quite distracting. We pulled in here last Sunday and have been totally soaking up the warm southern hospitality of Betsy and Harry who live in this wonderful, quiet oasis in the hills of Texas. Doug & Ruth go to the lake... ... to do a little fishing for blue gill perch. The girls enjoy the wild, blue bonnet flowers starting to cover the fields in early Spring. We visit the old renovated church in "downtown" Round Top that is the Children's Library with a picnic and play area out the front... And beautiful light and layout inside. We also visit the exquisite main chamber at Festival Hill where classical music is taught, demonstrated and enjoyed. With plenty of time for just one more go-cart ride...

Texas – we’re standing in it.

We arrived in Round Rock – just north of the Texas capital, Austin – yesterday afternoon and have been welcomed into the very comfortable home of Bill and Patty. To our delight, Bill has an encyclopedic knowledge of government, history, geography and Texas folklore that he is ever ready to share with us. On his library shelves are 140 books he has either written or co-authored including a special section of children's books. Bill is helpfully filling in the crater-like holes of our understanding about Texas. Everyone’s heard of Texas – and Texans love their larger than life portrayal and a certain mystique that is attributed to them and their state. What we didn’t know until we toured the historic Washington-on-the-Brazos museum was that Texas was once an independent nation. Sam Houston and a small band of Texas army fighters defeated the larger Mexican General Santa Anna’s army at San Jacinta. This came after Santa Anna had successfully pursued a devastating routing of the Alamo and Goliad in an attempt to put down the revolt by local Texas citizenry as they sought independence from Mexico. (Yes, at one stage all Texans were Mexican citizens). Knowing this helps us appreciate why Texans generally put their state first before their national identity. They fought and died for it. In fact, as Texas joined the Union (as the 28th state) they received agreeable terms in recognition that their “state” was an independent nation joining with the United States, the only US state to do so. In trying to explain some of the qualities of being a Texan, we read that “strength and individuality are admired”. Weakness is not. Texans welcome people who want to be Texan and, it seems, true Texans can’t understand why anyone would not want to be a Texan. One example of uniquely Texas-centric perspective comes from State Parks promotional material that can be found online (a very good site). It reads, in part:

“…The Rio Grande Valley is an ecosystem found nowhere else in the United States. It is a subtropical environment, which lies further south than any other part of the United States except Hawaii and part of Florida”.

Riddle me this. If “Hawaii and part of Florida” are further south, then isn’t it wrong to claim that the Rio Grande valley is “further south than any other part of the Unites States”? Apparently not in Texas. In continuing our cultural culinary experiences, we took the Blue Bell Ice Creamery tour and sampled their delicious ice cream. We also ate a chicken-fried steak and T-bone steak the other night. It is impossible to think what a large T-bone would look like since the small one we ordered covered the dinner plate! Again, the Texas mystique. Denise claims that our readers are not interested in the price of diesel – though we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get the best deals. Absent a photo to prove it, we did a $1.86/gallon fill-up yesterday. A new record low! And in the past few weeks we’ve noticed occasionally that diesel is sometimes cheaper than the most expensive gasoline. As visitors we can’t help but chuckle when little towns we’ve passed proudly proclaim themselves as “XYZ Capital of the World”, where “XYZ” may be something quite obscure. Certainly in the vastness of Texas they have a lot to offer across a very diverse geography that includes beaches, mountains, rivers, open plains, deserts, hill country, and piney forests. And within all these regions are various legends and historic sites to add color and character to the land. We're looking forward to our nearly month-long exploration of Texas.