Just a feed bag away

Today was road trip day.  We wanted to check out what is known as Hill Country, which is north-west of San Antonio.  (Think “City Slickers” … there are many dude ranches in the area).  

Karen was reading through one of the San Antonio books and she stumbled across the Brighter Days Horse Refuge.  Their mission is to take care of horses that would normally be destroyed.  We drove through the gates and parked the car at the visitor’s information trailer.  We noticed that some of the horses were just wandering around.  We went inside and there was a sign on the fridge that said to cut up some carrots and feed the animals.  Karen looked out the window and noticed that a sheep and goat were on the porch waiting for us to come outside.  I took the carrots out and in a few shorts minutes we had a feeding frenzy on our hands.  It was somewhat scary since the horses are quite big.  After Karen was cornered on the front porch, she decided to hide out in the safety of the car.  I took it upon myself to finish feeding the animals.  Once I ran out of food, the goat decided to ram the side of our car.  That was our cue to leave.

We left Pipe Creek and headed for cowboy country.  Bandera Texas is known as the cowboy capital of the world.  We dropped into the visitor center to pick up a map of the area and lunch recommendations.  Found out that on the 4th of July, the longhorns actually parade down Main Street!  We had a quick stroll along Main Street, went to a few interesting shops, and then decided to have lunch at O.S.T. restaurant aka Old Spanish Trail restaurant.  This place was really funky.  You could eat at the lunch counter and sit in saddles.  After a very yummy lunch (including taking the leftover home-made chips & salsa for a snack later), we decided to walk around some more.  A lady at one store told us about BYOS (Bring Your Own Steak) on Wednesday nights.  The townspeople get together, cook up steaks, and enjoy some beverages and music at one of the local restaurant/bars.  (We’ll have to come back for that on a future trip).  We headed back to our car and to our surprise, there was a horse parked in the next spot. .  There, sitting on the bench, sipping a Cherry Coke was an authentic Bandera cowboy.  This cowboy was the real deal, not no Mark’s Work Wearhouse wanna be cowboy.  He told us that he didn’t have a car, since he doesn’t go anywhere, and that Bess (the horse) was his only transportation.  We had to make one more stop in Bandera, at St. Stanislaus Catholic Church.  This church is the 2nd old Polish church in America.

Our next stop was just outside of Hunt, to a 60% scale model of Stonehenge.  It’s known as Stonehenge II and it also includes 2 Easter Island heads.  It was kinda weird to see Stonehenge in the middle of Texas.

We left Hunt and drove approximately an hour to Fredericksburg.  This town was settled by the Germans and has many quaint shops and restaurants.  It reminds me of St. Jacob’s.

Since we were in the area, we had to stop at one of the more famous towns in Texas, Luckenbach.  For those you who don’t know, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings had a hit song called “Luckenbach, Texas”.  The town basically is the general store which is also the bar, post office and dance hall.  We wandered in and found 4 guys sitting around playing their guitars and singing country classics.  It was so cool.

After much research on the Travel Channel and Food Network, we knew that we had to have dinner at The Salt Lick in Driftwood.  Within about 5 minutes of arriving at the restaurant, you could smell the BBQ in the air.  As we were being seated at our picnic table, we could see the big pit cooking all of the meats … pork ribs, brisket and sausage.  All I can say is that this place has the best BBQ I’ve ever had.  What’s even better about BBQ in Texas, is that they love dill pickles with their BBQ.

We filled our stomachs, waddled back to the car and made our way to the final stop of the day, Prime Outlets in San Marcos.  We didn’t have alot of time but we were able to check out the Bath & Body Works outlet and a Brighton outlet.  We need to come back here for more shopping.