“What do you want for your birthday?” I asked my Lina. “An adventure.” I pulled some levers, pushed some buttons, and made a plan. Sunday, February 16, 2020. We headed NW on US 183. This was a pleasure trip for ourselves, and I was also keen to preview a new route to West Texas …
There’s a desire that builds in me after too long a time away from Trans-Pecos Texas. The final winter weekend of 2016 presented an opportunity to scratch that itch when I learned that the Nature Conservancy’s Davis Mountains Preserve would be open. Lina and I chose to combine this year’s wedding anniversary trip with a …
Here’s a guest post: Austin holds a reputation for being a strange place. What are the most bizarre aspects of this creative city? photo: propertytaxloansfortexas.com Red Wassenich would never have imagined what he started probably as a novelty and a mild shocker would turn into a monster. Neither could he have foretold that the city …
Youth camps have graced the Kerrville area of the Texas Hill Country since the 1920s, but Presbyterians were the first denomination to start a summer church camp there. Methodists, Lutherans, and Catholics soon followed suite. Currently, one can visit nearby Mount Wesley, Camp Chrysalis, and TECABOCA. Mo Ranch is a 500-acre conference and camp center …
June 8, 1974, from the HWR Travel Log: On that Saturday, I was exploring southwest of Austin. I remembered that my high school algebra teacher, Turner Ferguson, taught riflery at a camp called Friday Mountain Ranch during the summers, so I drove into that gate to look for him. This was only three years since …
Although traveling and exploring Texas has been my life-long pursuit, I begin earnestly to do it in 1973, just after buying my first automobile. Still at UT studying radio-TV-film and living just off campus, I could walk to class, but on weekends drove my car. The Dodge Dart Sport Convertriple was so designated because it …
I’ve traveled back and forth from Austin to Corpus Christi probably hundreds of times, still making new discoveries every trip. On a recent weekend, though, I reached back to a distant, personal past. My first night out away from family as a teenager was during the summer of 1965 or ‘66, early in my junior …
It’s a tradition for Lina and me to commemorate our wedding every year by sleeping in a historic hotel or bed and breakfast. For our seventh this April, we added two other criteria: the place must be next to the ocean and a destination where neither of us had ever been. Tall orders? Filled! It …
Austin’s outdoors hold many hidden gems. In particular, I just rediscovered a public place that isn’t a park or preserve per se. The Austin Water Utility owns frontage along 3.5 miles of the Colorado River’s north bank near Bergstrom Airport. The 1,200-acre Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant offers a major bird observatory, manufactures Dillo Dirt …
When I know the route my clients use to get to or from Austin, I often suggest things for them to see. Here’s what I wrote for four Canadians recently: My tour to the Alamo City goes along US 281, one of the prettiest highways through mid-Texas. You’ll probably notice a strong German influence in …