Sunday, March 24, 2013

Luckenbach, Texas and Wildseed Farms

We're in Stonewall, Texas which is the birthplace of LBJ. There is so much to see and do here and the weather has been great! It has hit 80 degrees almost every day and I think it hit 90 the other day. It isn't humid though, so it feels cooler and it gets very cool at night. The LBJ National Park is just a mile up the road from us and we spent the day there on Tuesday. I took lots of pictures that day but I think I'm going to wait and post them on a separate blog post.

Stonewall is about ten miles from Fredericksburg and five miles from Luckenbach. Fredericksburg is a nice town with lots of wineries and fancy shops. It was settled by German immigrants and has a European flair to it. This is also wildflower country, largely due to the influence of Lady Bird Johnson. We're a bit early for peak wildflower season but the bluebonnets are starting to bloom and they are beautiful.

There is a large wildflower nursery nearby that grows fields of wildflowers and then cultivates the seeds for sale. We stopped there the other day to buy some herbs and spent quite a bit of time  wandering around the grounds. They have a lot of different gardens and butterfly habitats, beautiful pottery and metal sculptures. Here are some of the pictures I took at Wildseed Farms...



We might stop back at Wildseed Farm before we leave. We had some rain the other night and we're hoping there will be more wildflowers blooming. It's a nice place to spend a sunny afternoon.

On Wednesday, we went to Luckenbach, Texas. They say if you find Luckenbach, you have to be looking for it and, boy, is that the truth. Luckenbach has a population of three: the mayor, the sheriff and the minister of agriculture. The minister of agriculture is the guy who takes eggs into Austin to sell. The motto of Luckenbach is "Everybody is somebody in Luckenbach." It's a very cool little "town" which consists of a general store and bar and a couple of old buildings. It's mostly a live music venue and there is almost always somebody there playing music. The day we were there, there was a guy playing guitar and singing in the bar at the back of the store. A lot of musicians show up on Sundays to play at the outdoor venue so I think we're going to go there tomorrow and check that out.

I took this picture of the "Luckenbach Population 3" sign. They have problems with people stealing those signs which probably explains the sign that says "Caution: Radioactive Material" underneath.
That second picture is just an old building at the music venue and this next picture is the old post office which is now the General Store. I didn't take any pictures inside but it was a great store, a little bit touristy but lots of interesting Texas stuff, too, and old products from the days when it was a real general store.
This is the stage where the musicians play and a close-up of some roosters who were hanging out. It was afternoon but they were crowing the whole time we were there.

Luckenbach doesn't look like much but we really enjoyed it. Everyone was friendly and it just had a real good feel to the place.


We're staying in the area until Thursday, at least. We're only 400 miles to New Mexico and we were planning to try to get there this week but the weather is suppose to dip into the thirties in New Mexico while it's still in the sixties and seventies here. We're having fun so we thought we'd stay  a few more days and enjoy the great weather. We'll get to New Mexico eventually. I'm surprised how much we're loving Texas.


Well it's after midnight so I'd better get to bed. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Thanks for stopping by!

2 comments:

  1. Hi Pam-

    Teri and I volunteered at LBJ State Park in Fall 2010 and 2011. Teri worked the office/gift shop and I worked down on the living history farm. If you didn't make it over to the farm it is worth a visit.

    Mark

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Mark,
    We spent the afternoon there last Tuesday and loved it! We even talked about the fact that it would be a great place to volunteer sometime and I looked it up when we got back to see if they had volunteer opportunities. I think it would be fun there plus we both really love this area.

    Thanks for commenting. I've been checking your blog regularly. You're getting to be quite the bird photographer! I need to work on that.

    Pam

    ReplyDelete