Day 6 - San Antonio to San Marcos TX

First up, I thought I'd show you some of the cool cars we're seeing here.  These are especially for Thomas and DJ, who wanted to see some American cars.  Jeremy - you might like these too.

We've seen a lot of these cars.  It's amazing how many Dodge Challengers, Ford Mustangs and Chev Camaros there are here. 

This one's a Ford Mustang

 

And here's a Chev Camaro

 

Here's a Dodge Challenger.  

All three cars are equally popular here and can be purchased (top-end V8s) for around $29-30000.  Cheap eh?

Chev Corvettes are the next step up - available for around $70,000.  Here are a couple we saw today...
   


And here's a classic.  The All American Woody - wood-sided Jeep Wagoneer. 



We've yet to see a Dodge Viper or Ford GT- or for that matter, Jeremy, an Aston.  We're not expecting to see one of those here...

Oh - the other thing we see HEAPS of are 4WD utes.  They are ALL OVER THE PLACE.  Here's a particularly large one...

Enough of cars for now.

Righto - today we left our hotel in San Antonio, which was in a great location.  Just across the road from the Market Square, a popular place for stalls selling all sorts of souvenirs.  We took advantage of our hotel's proximity to the markets to have a look around the stalls for an hour or so, before walking down the road to Spanish Governor's Palace, established in 1722.  Here it is:

 

 Thought you'd be interested in this sign, on a wall at Market Square:


This was just across the road.  The all-American Wells Fargo.



We then drove up to Fredericksburg, an historic and very German town that is taking advantage of its German heritage in the same way Akaroa works off its French history in New Zealand.  It works well for Fredericksburg too.

Both Nige and I have picked up a bit of a cold, so we popped into a 'drug-store' for some medicine.  This place was a huge supermarket pharmacy, with a drive-through window.  Really.  The medicine was so much cheaper here than in NZ.  Coldrex Day/Night was $8.  Lip balm was 93cents.

The road to Fredericksberg was very attractive - thanks Dan for the tip-off.  Rolling hills with lovely wild flowers on either side of the road.  The bush here isn't as nice as what we have in NZ - more like the dry Aussie stuff - but it made for a change from the flat lands we've been used to up to now.  Here are some shots from Fredericksberg today.


I couldn't resist taking this shot of a couple of old-timers enjoying a home-made ice cream at Fredericksburg.

This is one of the better-known older buildings in Fredericksburg, the Schandua Hotel, built in1897.


 Need a Stetson?  We passed a shop with a bunch of them.  Take your pick...

And here's a German bierhaus...

We've been trying to work out the difference between State Troopers, Sheriffs, County Police and City Police.  Nige couldn't resist so he wandered up to a Policeman (on his pushbike) to see what the story was.  This guy had red and blue flashing lights on his bike.  Oh yeah...

Popped into a couple of churches at Fredericksberg.  Once had cool blue stained glass windows, that meant the inside of the church was bathed in a very soothing blue colour.

This is the interior of the other church.  Both are beautiful but very different looking churches, sitting right beside each other.

From here, we travelled on through miles of narrow 3rd rate roads (comparable to much of our State Highway network) to a tiny place called Luckenback, Texas, made famous by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.  This place was on a dirt track and so hard to find, we almost drove past it...

What a cool place.  When we arrived, an old timer C&W singer was sitting there, with his beers and a small audience singing some Texan western to an appreciative group of a dozen-odd, who had made the same trip as us.  This was a real old live ghost town, with an old time shop/post office and a couple of out-houses.  Here are some pics

Here are a bunch of Cowboys - the singer is the guy at the back, who looks like Kenny Rogers. 

This old boy seems to be enjoying the whole scene...

We then took some small connecting roads to get us to Gruene, Texas.  One led us to a cool little vineyard in the middle of nowhere; a place called Sister Creek.  Here's a picture from outside.

And just down the road there was an OLD abandoned service station, just like something out of the Cars movies.  There was even an old broken down Ford Thunderbird parked beside it.

Here's our Chevie parked beside the gas pumps...

 From here it was on to Gruene, via Fischer (population about 6).  Had to stop at Fischer, albeit for 10 seconds to snap these pictures...

Gruene was another old-worlde type town with a lovely river running alongside the town.  Two features of this lovely and quite popular town, other than the river are the old-time dance hall (oldest in Texas) and a rather large water tower.  Here are both in one shot.

And this is inside the bar part of the Dance Hall.  The hall was behind the bar, and some musicians were warming up to play there tonight.  There'll be a lot of foot-stompin' and hollerin' going on in Gruene tonight.

Here is the Gruene River.  Tubing seems to be a popular activity here. 

Just to finish off for the night, here are a couple of shots of Texan wildflowers we took today.

Looking forward to our first encounter with a Tucker Torpedo tomorrow.  Stay tuned...