From Garner State Park we drove up to Kerrville via a scenic route through the Texas Hill Country. Mike says we were really driving through small mountains; Texans just call it “the Hill Country” because even the hills are bigger in Texas.
We didn’t realize we were going to be following the
Guadalupe River, so we hadn’t been expecting to see the devastation from the
floods that happened there in July 2025. It was clear in places how much water
had come torrenting through, with trees knocked down and debris carried with
the water. We saw battered buildings and places where there was nothing left
but the foundations of houses. The small town of Hunt, Texas, still had tents
set up providing food and other supplies to residents who had been affected by
the flooding.
There were also some beautiful places along the Guadalupe
River, but it seemed like a lot of people were also just rebuilding in the same
place. All we could figure was that the floods had been considered a
“hundred-year event,” so the folks who were rebuilding just thought they didn’t
have to worry about it again in their lifetimes. Seems like that is perhaps a
foolish gamble.
The Guadalupe River is scenic when not in flood,
but the gauge shows how fast it can get out of control
Past Kerrville, we stopped in the town of Fredericksburg,
where we passed a place called The Quiet House. My parents had stayed there
when visiting my sister and brother-in-law in Austin, and I remembered that
they liked Fredericksburg a lot. It was kind of neat to see where they had
stayed. We parked the van and camper on a side street in town and had lunch at
a very German bier hall, the Auslander, then walked around town.
We had lunch at a nice biergarten in Fredericksburg, Texas
From Fredericksburg, we continued on to Luckenbach, Texas,
to see the ghost town and its dance hall, where they still have live music
every day. The day we were there, it was warm, so the entertainment was on the
outside stage, and it was quite good. We sat and listened to the music for
awhile; a cowboy poet recited some works in between songs.
I really liked seeing Luckenbach, because one of my favorite
albums of all time, ¡Viva Terlingua! by Jerry Jeff Walker, was recorded
in the dance hall there in 1973. I’ve worn out a record and a cassette tape of
that album, but I do still have the CD. It was fun to see the place where it
was recorded in front of a live dance hall audience many years ago. In fact, it was not long after Hondo Crouch bought the town in 1970; Jerry Jeff and his outlaw country buddies had just started to appreciate the Luckenbach state of mind when the album was recorded. When he and some friends bought the ghost town, Hondo was quoted as saying, “Dallas wasn’t for sale—besides the American way is to start
small and work your way up.”
“Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas, with Willie and Waylon and the boys . . .”
Continuing through the Hill Country we reached Blanco, where
we talked about staying overnight, but we decided to move on before we
stopped. But first I had a brief shop at the Textile Center,
where Blanco’s quilt shop was located. Blanco seemed like a nice small town; it
had a big courthouse, but I read that the county seat had actually moved to
Johnson City (as in Lyndon Baines Johnson) some years before. The old
courthouse is an office building now.
We came around to San Marcos, which is really near San
Antonio, where we had started, so we kind of made a big circle. Spending the
night at a motel off the highway there, we were up and at ’em the next morning
to go to . . . an outlet center. Well, not any outlet center, but one with a
Wrangler/Lee outlet, which are hard to find these days. Mike was a bit
disappointed; the focus of Wrangler has changed from cowboy clothes to, if not
high fashion, at least medium fashion. But he did find a couple of pairs of
shorts and a pair of pants, so that was good. We wandered around the outlet
mall for awhile, had a delicious lunch at a burger and shake place (hamburgers
in Texas tend to be really delicious, and the chocolate shake was kind of amazingly
good, too), and then we had to face reality: It was going to rain for the next
three days.
But we had a plan! The charming German town of New Braunfels
was not far at all from San Marcos, and we found a reasonably priced inn that
said it was within walking distance of downtown (if it wasn’t pouring down
rain). We booked it for three nights, but when we arrived we were not sure if
we could park the van and camper in their tiny parking lot, which also had two
large trees as obstacles. It was a small place altogether, just three rooms and
a cottage. Mike did a very impressive job of backing the camper into a parking
space (we were the only ones in residence except for the owners, who lived in
the house in front).
The Comal Inn, New Braunfels, Texas
We talked to the owner, Brent, for awhile, and gave him a
tour of our camper (that takes about 18 seconds), then we moved in to the very
comfortable room that would be our refuge from the rain. Brent told us that a
lot of times when rain is predicted, it rains all around but not in New
Braunfels. Well, that was true to a certain extent. It didn’t rain too much on
Friday, so we walked around the neighborhood, which was full of historic little
houses, including the house of the “Father of Texas Botany,” Ferdinand Jacob
Lindenheimer, who lived just across the street—about a century ago.
New Braunfels began under a charter drawn up by German
Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels on behalf of the Adelsverein (Society for
the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas). They wanted to keep their German
culture alive even after they settled in the middle of Texas, and they’ve done
a pretty good job of it. Jacob Luckenbach, the namesake of the town of Luckenbach, was one of the earliest immigrants to take up the Adelsverein offer to come to Texas and start anew. He also fought in the Texas war of independence, along with many other Texians and Tejans (more on that in my next installment).
On Saturday morning, I walked down to the farmer’s market, which was
great fun. Lots of food—I got strawberries and cheese and pecans—and other
interesting things, too. I walked further into town, to the main street (oddly it’s not called Main Strasse), where
there’s a big oval plaza. And right next to the farmer’s market was Krause’s
Bier Hall, so that was our destination for dinner that evening. And yes, we
both had delicious schnitzel.
Farmer’s Market in New Braunfels
Sunday was rainier, so instead of walking, we drove up to
the oldest bakery in Texas for breakfast. Naegelin’s bakery has been operating
since 1868, and they had strudel and kolaches and even schenken. After a
delicious pastry breakfast, the rain had let up a bit so Mike took a walk down
across the Comal River, a tributary of the Guadalupe River, to see the
Schlitterbahn. Which is really something. It’s a water park with, among other
things, a Bavarian castle. Apparently there’s always been a spring feeding the
river and a swift current to float on, and they just sort of took it from a
pastoral picnic area to the biggest water park you’ve ever seen. They made up
the name for it, which means “slippery road,” and it’s apparently a madhouse in
the summer.
The Naegelin Bakery has been operating since 1868
That evening, we ate delicious German food again at the Alpine House up the street. New Braunfels was a charming town, but the rain is supposed to stop so we’re heading out in the morning, with or without more Naegelin pastries.
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