Luckenbach Texas and Pedernales Falls State Park…

Every time we come to central Texas we have to stop at Luckenbach. There really isn’t much to see at Luckenbach but it is a wonderful place to listen to some good old guitar pickin’ as well as hearing Texas folk and country music. Since “Everybody is somebody in Luckenbach” we decided we should check out Luckenbach on a weekend since we have only experienced it on weekdays. Yes it is much more crowded but with the crowds come more musicians.

We had a blast listening to the music and meeting new friends. We even met a group of people from Mamou Louisiana and they were surprised to find out that we had been to Fred’s Lounge. We had to explain that all RV’ers who visit Betty’s RV Park in Abbeville, La. knows about Fred’s. Anyway, Jim from the Mamou group had it on his bucket list to visit Luckenbach and have the chance to play and sing.  After some liquid courage he approached the group of musicians jamming who of course welcomed him to play. It was fun seeing him live out this dream and he was pretty darn good, too!

 

The next day we headed out for a hill country drive with our target being Pedernales Falls State Park. It has been more than 30 years since we have visited this park which lies just about 10 miles east of Johnson City. With about 20 miles of hiking and mountain biking trails it is a great place to spend a day. When we were younger we went to tube and swim in this park. Nowadays they have restricted swimming and tubing to the eastern reaches of the park and left the more scenic “falls” area as a place with a ban on swimming, wading and tubing. This makes this stretch of the Pedernales River a great place for hiking, birding and photography.

 

We parked at the falls parking lot and brought along a lunch that we planned to eat at the falls. It is really nice to see a lot of water in the Pedernales River as I wasn’t sure what to expect with all the drought that Texas has endured the last four years. But once we got to the Pedernales Falls (or as we knew it, P-falls) it was just as I remembered it! What a great place for lunch as we sat at the base of the falls on a shelf of limestone enjoying our lunch with the sound of falling water in the background…

After lunch we boulder hopped our way upstream about a mile or more to take in the beauty of P-falls and the surrounding hill country landscape. There were a lot of people there but a big as P-falls State Park it was easy not to notice the crowd. We really enjoyed the day wandering around the P-falls watershed and reminiscing about days gone by…

After hiking back to our car and leaving the falls we stopped at Pecan Brewing Company in Johnson City, Texas and enjoyed a couple of their wonderfully crafted beers. It was a great way to end a special day!