One Last Scenic Hill Country Loop Drive…

With our time winding down here in the Texas Hill Country we decided to take one more loop drive. This hill country drive would include some better known sites but would be a bit longer than our normal loop drive.

The furthest point would be Fredericksburg, Texas and include stops at some of our favorite places. It would also include a few stops at new spots we haven’t been to. After lunch we hit the road and started our loop heading north on Texas 484 to Fischer.

After checking out the little town of Fischer we headed NW on Texas 32 to Blanco Texas. Blanco has a neat courthouse and little downtown area on the verge of being revitalized. It is also home to one of our favorite Texas Breweries called Real Ale. No visit for us this day as it was a bit early but if you are in the area check it out!

From Blanco TX we drove west on Texas 1888 along the Blanco river and then headed north on Texas 1663 to Albert, or Albert Freaking Texas. We have already visited so we didn’t stop this time around and continued on to Stonewall Texas on Highway 281.

Stonewall Texas is home to Burg’s Corner known very well for its hill country peaches. Back in the early 1970’s my mother would drive up from where we lived in San Antonio to buy a bushel or two of their peaches. I have fond memories of helping her can those peaches and remember very well her very delicious peach jams and cobblers. I just had to stop to visit for nostalgic reasons…

From Stonewall we continued on 290 to Fredericksburg a very quaint Texas town of German heritage.  It is home to Opa’s sausage and the Nimitz museum. Another fun stop is a little store on the main drag which has various food products for sale with tastes of most of them available. Here we tried such things as Agarito Jelly, Mesquite Bean Jelly, Jalapeno Peanut Butter and some seriously hot Hot Sauces. One I tried contained over 6 Million Scoville units. In comparison a typical jalapeño is from 2,500 to 5, 000 Scoville units while a habanero pepper ranges from 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville units.

After Fredericksburg we drove south on Texas 1376 to Lukenbach. This is a lively little honkytonk made famous by Waylon,  Willie and the boys. It was late enough to partake in a frosty adult beverage, Shiner Beer of course. A couple of strummers were singing some country music so we sat and enjoyed a tune or two before heading out.

While driving down 1888, turning right on Crab Apple Rd, a scenic back road, we spotted several large exotic Axis deer. Man they had huge racks. A lot of exotic animals can be seen in the Texas hill country as there are many hunting ranches with many different species.

The other day we were driving over to the very scenic Edge Falls in the hill country and we spotted a small group of zebras running around on a ranch. I should mention that going to the falls off of Edge Falls road right after a good rain will ensure the falls reward viewers with a good flow and provide a very scenic stop.

Well our last stop was at the Rough Diamond Brewery outside of Kendalia and then we headed back to the park. After some discussion we have decided rather than head further west we will instead return to College Station to work on our rent house. So we will be bidding farewell to the hill country for another year…

NOTE: We are back in our old home town until July 7th…