Heading West
We left Waco and headed south to Boerne, where my cousin, Betty and her husband Stuart live. We spent an enjoyable evening with them, enjoying one of the cool local restaurants for dinner and then breakfast the next day. Boerne is a small town about an hour outside of San Antonio with lots of little shops restaurants – a fun place to stop and spend a day or two. There are so many little towns like this in Texas. You don’t need to stay in the big cities at all really, and get a much better sense of the real Texas when you get away from them.
Leaving the next day, we were making our way towards Big Bend in West Texas, but were in no particular hurry, so we stopped in at Garner State Park to go for a hike. We chose the short but steep Old Baldy Trail (.5 miles each way). It was great to get outside and enjoy the warmth of the day and stretch ourselves a bit after two months of being couch potatoes at home. It was well worth the effort to make it up to the top where the views were spectacular.
Once down, we drove on to the little town of Uvalde where we stayed in a motel for the night. There is not a lot to say about this town except for the fact that they really do love their trees – so much so that they built roads around them – like the tree is in the middle of the road! Its ok if you live there and know the score, but if you were unfamiliar and heading down one of these roads at the end of a long day, you might be in for a big surprise!!!!
Another thing I would like to note is the pronunciation of place names here in Texas. They kind of just go their own way, so you really have to ask locals how names are pronounced. For example, this little town of Uvalde is pronounced “ooo-val-day” – I guess not too far off what you might think. Boerne is pronounced “Bernie” – I don’t see it, but there you go. And up in Waco, there is the Bosque River which is pronounced “Boskee” – go figure! Oh well, it was a lovely town and we enjoyed our little overnight there.
Continuing on, we stopped at Seminole Canyon State Park. This was a planned camping spot until we found out their campground was closed for renovations – rats! However, they had a daily tour through the canyon to see the pictographs there. We were really looking forward to doing this tour, so stuck around for it, knowing we would be driving on a bit farther later on, but knowing it would be worth it. And wow, was it ever! The tour guide, a retired geologist, had much to tell us about the geological history of this area, pointing out fossilized sea shells from millions of years ago when this area was part of the ocean, as well as how limestone rock is formed. It was really interesting just to see all this. As well, he showed us many of the plants native to this area and explained how they were used by the native people here – so amazing how well they used everything!
At last we came to the main attraction here – the petroglyphs or cave paintings. Some were more easily seen than others, but the signage the park had put up helped us to see what there was. Of course, people can only guess as to the meaning behind these paintings, but they are pretty spectacular and it was so wonderful to have this chance to see them up close like that – so worth the time taken!
Once finished, we headed off to the small town of Sanderson where we found the rv park recommended to us by the park ranger at Seminole. Arriving at dark, we paid our $15.00 and quickly went to a nearby restaurant for a good Mexican dinner, managing to get there pretty much right before they closed for the night. Dinner done, we made our way back to our rv park. This is such a small town and we were now well away from the light pollution of a big city, so the stars that night were just amazing! We were looking forward to getting to Big Bend the next day, and hopeful we would be able to find camping there so that we could stay for a number of days – but that’s a story for my next blog post, so stay tuned!
