Walburg, TX

     There are times in a new relationship where you begin to realize that things might get a little rocky. That's fine, you know. Every relationship needs to have a little give and take here and there. It can be rough, though, when the other party just won't listen to reason.
     The trip to Walburg, for instance, was when I realized that I and my new GPS weren't going to see eye-to-eye on things. Like, for example, the existence of Walburg, TX. I knew it existed. It's on Google Maps. There are signs that point to it. There's a restaurant there called The Walburg Restaurant. There's even been UFO sightings near there. My GPS, however, refused to believe me so I was forced to somewhat manually navigate.
     After I returned from The Grove, my friend wanted to go to lunch. I needed an excuse to go to Walburg. Going to the Walburg Restaurant seemed like a good idea. I picked her up and, after fighting with the Red Head's GPS, we mosied on up there.

It. Is. On. The Map!

     Walburg is on FM 972 in the upper reaches of Georgetown and established sometime between 1881 and 1886. It was originally named Concordia. It's a pleasant place and isn't deserted. There are a number of buildings and houses, I think. There's actually two places to eat but I haven't had a chance to try Dale's Essenhaus. Yet.

Home to a contraption

     Like most small towns, it just runs down the main street. Had it gotten bigger it would have grown to take up more streets. Probably. I'm not an expert in the life cycle of a city.

     I don't write about the roads to get to these places as much as I'd like. I think I'm going to have to break down and buy a GoPro or something and mount it to the car so I can go back and review. Most of these roads are generally straight but with some wicked 90 degree turns. They're paved, for the most part. You may think I'm being facetious but I'm not; there are many roads that are still not paved. Especially (possibly only) county roads.

Stuff  you see on the back roads

I recommend stopping in and eating here

     The Walburg Restaurant, by the way, is pretty good. A lot of German food. They even have a biergarten in the back, which the social side of me would love to go to for an evening and see a bunch of people having fun. My friend assures me, though, that there'd be five people back there. They also have an arcade which I would say would be for the kids to enjoy while the parents were getting plastered, but I'd totally go in there.

What arcades in the 1800s looked like

I don't think it's a delivery truck

Additional photos are [here]

The Grove, TX

     I haven't been updating this blog as often as I should have. For personal reasons I've been a bit tethered in where I can go and when, but now I'm ready to get back out there on the road and do some explorin'. That the summer months are getting behind us and the weather should be getting cooler has nothing to do with it. I have, though, been doing some driving; I just haven't written about it. I'll try and get through the backlog of visited places.

     Sometimes I wake up in the morning and just feel like doing something. So I swing the camera case over my shoulder, and walk out the door. After I get down the three flights of stairs I check my camera and see that I forgot to put the SD card back in. Even though I have at least two of them, I only know where one is so I go back up the three flights of stairs, open the door, grab the SD card and walk out the door. Then I stop and try and remember if I locked the door. Then I check the door. Then I got all the way downstairs again and put the SD card in the camera.

     At this point I don't feel like going anywhere. But I'm dressed, I'm outside, and I'm ready to go. So I do. This particular day I chose to go to The Grove. There are, it turns out, two The Groves: one in Jefferson, TX and the other is near Fort Hood and Temple. I went to the Temple one since it was an actual town and not just a house.

     The Grove is kinda sorta famous. There's a video about it being auctioned off a few years ago.

     It's in private hands now. Technically, I don't think I should have been there but I didn't know that until I got very close to a very small sign that basically said to ask for permission before tromping around. Despite that, the woman who drove by me on the dirt rode did so very slowly so's not to raise up a lot of dust and ruin my pictures.

Game time! Find the dragonfly!

     The Grove was established in 1859 and named for the trees around it. Once prosperous, it was brung low by Highway 36 not going through it, Fort Hood needing some land, and the building of Belton Dam. It's on FM 1114 and not far from SH36. It's pretty easy to get to. It's also not far from Mother Nef State Park. Practically right across the street.

     The place has seen better days, I suppose. The new owners, I think, haven't decided what to do with the place.

Not much in the way of merchandise right now

     It's a pleasant drive, though. Except, of course, for the parts of I35 that I had to take. That's just a nightmare. I think it's certainly worth a look.

Soda Signs

     There's a sign for a Grapette soda on one of the buildings. I wondered if it were real since The Grove had been used to film some TV and movies and it's not unknown for the production people to put fake placements in. It turns out it is a real soda and it's still being sold. At Wal*Mart. Go figure.

     I'd like to mention at this point that I get a lot of information from Wikipedia, The Texas State Historical Association, and Texas Escapes. Without these sites I'd just be driving around in circles.

   

New Sweden

     For a while now I've been saying that if you can think of a word, there's probably a town with that name. Or was a town with that name. This is not true as I couldn't find a Jupiter (from the last entry) or a Damn (which I find surprising since there was an Eye Gouge, TX at one time).
     That being said, there's probably a good number of foreign countries and cities used as town names. And there's a New Sweden. Or was. Well, as I've been finding out, towns like New Sweden still exist, they just don't usually have their own school system or post office. It's a little like being a named subdivision in a larger city. This is why, when you're driving through a section of Big City you'll see businesses using the name SmallTownville on everything. As it is now, I guess New Sweden is considered a part of Manor.
     Anyway, New Sweden is on FM 973, northeast of Manor, west of Manda, and south of Cele. I don't think there's very much there besides a church, which gave the town its name.

That steeple is ridiculously high

      It was built in 1922, although it was established in 1876. Perhaps there was an older building there? There's also a cemetery.

     We didn't see very much other than that. FM 973 isn't a particularly busy road on the weekends.

But there were horses

McKinney Roughs

In Texas, during the summer, it's not always a good idea to say, "Hey, we should go for a walk," without having a really good idea of where you're going, what time it is, how long are you planning on being gone, what time is it, what are you bringing with you, and what time it is. If you're going to go walking around the woods at two o'clock in the afternoon, you damn well better bring some water with you.

A whole lot of nature

And that's totally what I didn't do when I went for a walk with a friend of mine. At McKinney Roughs. Which I now hate forever mostly because of my lack of planning but also for promising a river and not mentioning that it's, like, ten miles away from the sign that says "<- River."

Still not seeing a river

We saw the sign and thought, yeah, let's go down by the water. After the first mile we realized it wasn't going to be that close. After the second mile we started thinking about turning around, but, what if it's just around the next corner? It wasn't around the next corner after mile three. Or four. But, after the fifth mile it was at the bottom of a hill.

Whoop, there it is!

The trail, by the way, is made of rocks and sand. Climbing back uphill was unpleasant, like walking across the worst beach in the world. On Jupiter. In the end, I didn't die and I was happy about that.

Driving back to Austin on SH 71 we decided to stop at a place that sells pecan related items and, much to my delight, cold drinks. They also had a giant squirrel. 

America needs more odd roadside attractions

Lockhart State Park

Not so long ago I decided not to get one of those yearly passes to the state park system. I thought that I probably wouldn't be going to any very often. Evidently, I am a fool because that's the only places I've been to so far. Today I would have hit two of them if I hadn't been worried about the supposed rain. And that I was pretty darn tired after going to Lockhart.

Lockhart State Park is cheap, in comparison to the other state parks. It costs $3.00 to get in. Per person, I think. So it's cheap for me. It's... Nice? I guess? I can't really fault it for anything. It's got space for camping, if that's your thing (it's not mine). There's a creek or a river that goes through it. There are several dams that were built in the 1930's by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

I followed several trails. What I wanted to do was to start at one end and kind of make a loop around the park and that meant skipping a couple of trails. But that's good, because it'll give me a reason to go back. Most of the trails were pretty easy in that they were mostly flat, but there are a couple that made me question why I was trying to climb up a trail. The CCC Trail, in particular, was kind of brutal (for me, an old fat man) but it was worth it to get to the part where there's a steep drop off and a timber and chain railing that's falling apart.

Of course, if I had started the trail where I was supposed to, I would have found that first and gone downhill all the way. But I'm not one to follow the rules, baby! Anyway, that led to the old recreation hall that was also built in the 1930s. Or started from there. The building looks like it's undergoing renovations right now but, as I understand it, it used to be the golf pro shop. I probably didn't mention that the park is also a golf course.

By the recreation hall there's a bunch of stone picnic tables so I took the opportunity to sit down and try not to die. I wondered, then, if these were original tables and tried to imagine what it was like back in 1930s. Was it really popular? Was it busy? What did they do? What did they eat?

Eventually I had to leave so I started the long hike back to the car by way of a couple of different trails. I met very few people, but I did come across to older ladies who were trying to figure out what different plants were. They were friendly and asked if I had taken any good pictures and made general chit-chat. Then I was off again.

When I left, I took FM20 to SH71. FM20 is a nice drive. It's basically straight, but there are a number of hills that make it interesting. I took SH71 east, which brought my past Bastrop State Park. There were a lot of trees that were nothing more than burnt stumps, remnants of the fire a few years ago. It looked eerie.

Eventually I made my way to Smithville. Smithville has been the location for several films and once held a Guinness Book of Records record for largest Gingerbread Man. It's a charming place and has several places to eat and shop, if you're an antique kind of person. I was hungry from all the walking and it was past lunch time so I went to the Comfort Cafe. And had breakfast.

The Comfort Cafe is, I guess you'd say, unusual in that it's part of a recovery program called SerenityStar. The cafe is 'pay what you can' and the proceeds go to keeping the program going so it's a good cause.

After that, I felt it was time to get home. I got the navicomp to plot a course home that was the shortest, as opposed to the quickest. I'm certainly glad I did. It directed me on a lot of small roads that were fun as anything to drive on in the Challenger.

McKinney Falls State Park in Austin, TX

I am a big fan of water. Not only does it give a body life, but it can also take it away if you have too much of it. Besides that, water is full of mystery. I enjoy sitting on the shore of an ocean and watching the lights of the ships and wondering where they're coming from, where they're going. I wouldn't actually like to know, of course, because that would diminish the mystery and the romance. Water, when it's deep, is impenetrable to us at the moment. We can only go down so far, only see so far. We don't know what lies below, in the dark, in the crushing pressure. Maybe there are cities down there. Shipwrecks. Maybe even a crashed UFO from thousands of years ago fell to the bottom of the Atlantic. We'd never know.

When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey there was a reservoir not too far away. Rumors had it that the original town of Boonton lay beneath the surface. Some even mentioned seeing a church steeple when the water level dropped far enough until, one day, it collapsed. They weren't really rumors; the reservoir does cover the site of the original Boone Town or Booneton or Boonton. What remains of Boone Town? I have no idea, but since I don't know if anyone in the town was notified of this flooding or not I often think there are watery skeletons having dinner.

Technically, nobody who wasn't official was supposed to be in the reservoir area but that didn't stop many people from cutting through the fence and going in there to fish or smoke dope or whatever it was they did. I walked around and looked at the remains of stone fences, stone walls, and dark menacing wells sitting beneath the dense tree cover.

This is why most parks I visit have water. Or, rather, promise water seeing as how Texas can have its dry periods. Today I decided to visit McKinney Falls State Park. Because of the falls, you see. We've just had about a weeks worth of rain and I figured if there was a good time to see flowing water, today would be it. And it was up into the low 70˚s with partly cloudy skies.

It's a state park so it costs money to get in. You can also camp there, I think, and fish and barbecue. Oh, and you can swim if there's water there.

The summary from Wikipedia says:

McKinney Falls State Park is a state park located at the southeastern edge of Austin, Texas, United States around the confluence of Onion and Williamson Creeks and is administered by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The park opened on April 15, 1976 and is named after Thomas F. McKinney, a businessman, race horse breeder and rancher, who owned and lived on the land in the mid-to-late 19th century.

If you want to know more, head on over there and read the rest of it.

I walked around the park, which, according to my good buddy the iPhone, was almost a 5½ mile walk. The main trail that runs around the park is paved, which is good since there was a lot of mud about. The falls, themselves, were a bit of a disappointment. I had hoped, with all the rain, that they'd be a bit more impressive but it is a creek and not a river so I probably shouldn't be so critical. I went to the upper falls first and then walked counter-clockwise along the trail. By the time I got to the lower falls the area was full of people getting in my way. By that time I was getting tired and cranky anyway, so I didn't stay too long or take too many pictures.

I was lucky enough to get some pictures of a cardinal. Maybe two. Possibly three. Honestly, I think it was the same one. I also got some pictures of a couple of bugs. And a lizard. Wikipedia says that white-tailed deer, raccoons, armadillos and fox squirrels are common there, but I didn't see any of them. Just a couple of birds, a few bugs, a lizard, and some mushrooms.

So what did I walk away from this trip? Pain. A lot of pain. It's been a long time since I've done a three mile hike, so making a five mile one is currently making me walk like John Wayne after a rather rigorous horse ride. It was a good walk, though, so I'm not going to complain. Much.

McKinney Falls photo album is here.

So It Begins... [Belton, TX]

I like driving. I like taking pictures. I also like writing. I live in Texas. It's only taken me about ten years to combine all these things into a blog. It's only really been possible in the last five years, though, so that's an excuse for you. This weekend, though, I was writing in my 'travel' journal and thought, "Ya know, you could be blogging this, too. Somebody might find it interesting." I already have a blog but it's sort of a mish-mash of a bunch of different things. I got the hankerin' to put something together that would be strictly about travelling.

Since I don't like travelling in general, I tend to stay in one place. Luckily, that one place turns out to be Texas and Texas is, if you haven't checked a map lately, really big. If you want a peek into how my brain works, it's totally okay for me to travel in-state because I consider it 'local.' Much in the same way I would balk at spending $100 for one item from one store but have no trouble spending $10 in ten different stores, I'll go places here that I would never do when I lived in New Jersey.

For example, yesterday, on a whim, I drove 144 miles. That was just wandering around, but let's say I drove 122 miles and then turned around to go back home. Had I been living in New Jersey, still, I could gone anywhere in this circle:

Where you can go in 122 miles

I tell you this: I wouldn't go anywhere on the edge of that circle. Not only because a significant portion falls into the Atlantic Ocean, but just because I wouldn't think of driving to Albany. Or Connecticut. Or halfway through Pennsylvania. It just wouldn't happen. A trip like any of those would require planning and supplies. But here, in Texas, it's a matter of thinking, "Hey, I think I'll drive around a bit."

Yesterday I drove up I35 almost to Waco before heading west to Moody. I don't actually remember what road I took to get to Moody but I do know that when I turned around at a Family Dollar Store I ended up going back the same way that I came which ended up, somehow, not being the way I got there. I'm also surprised at how many dollar stores end up in the seemingly middle of nowhere. 

Anyway, I turned back onto SH317 which, eventually, runs right into I35 to the south. Had I turned left (or hadn't stopped at all) I would have ended up in Crawford which is something I had been planning to do for a couple of weeks now. I had I gone to Mexico Lindo for lunch and read my notes I may have gone there. But I didn't. I headed south on the highway that Wikipedia says was designated in 1939. It is a long, straight, small stretch of road with not much besides horses and cows to look at. It does have a high speed  limit of 70-75MPH. I wonder what it looked like back in 1939. I wonder if it was even paved in 1939. 

Texas State Highway 317 runs through Belton. I have been to a park on a lake in Belton, but I hadn't been in the city itself until yesterday. SH317 runs through the downtown section which is the 'original' town. It's got old buildings that look neat. It also had a park that I could see from the road so I turned off, parked, and took some pictures.

Brown Pigeon. Or Dove. Take your pick.

Chinese Goose

Muscovy Duck

Yetti Polk Park is on Nolan Creek

Another place I wish I had stopped to eat lunch at

Nolan Creek runs through Belton. I really love it when water runs through a town. Granted, it's no San Antonio, but it looks nice and if you ever want to be near water to hear it gurgling, well, you can do that. I really wish I had spent more time there and explored the downtown section. 

It's not the best entry for a travel blog, but it is a start. I have a whole list of places that I'd like to visit one day so I hope that this blog grows quite a bit.