Big Beautiful Texas

Nov. 15

We covered a lot of miles today.  Texas is one big state.  After taking highway 10 east through Junction to  Kerrville, we took  173 down to Jourdanton  where we turned south onto Highway 16 to about 10 miles south of Tilden.

 

 

We drove through some beautiful country between Kerrville and Hondo.  It was ranch and oil country and the people seem to be doing well.  There were beautiful estates scattered throughout the valleys.  Often the houses were high up on the hills or even on the very top of the hills. There were also some estates that were on flatter ground set in off the highway.  They had beautiful yards with manicured lawns and trees and the houses were massive.  These estates generally had small pastures off to the side, often with horses grazing on them.   We saw a lot of cattle in this area and grass seemed to be plentiful.

The entrances to these estates were  quite a work of art.  Often there were brick or stone pillars on each side of the entrance with an overhead arch where the name of the ranch was written.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get a picture of any of the fancy ones but I did snap a couple of the plainer ones just to give you an idea.

 

 

 

 



Approaching Bandera



 

 

The town of Bandera, which lies about halfway between Kerrville and Hondo, is a very charming little western town with lots of character. I snapped this store front as we were driving through town. 

 

 

And what would a frontier town do without a horse on top of a building?

 

 

 

 

 

This little river flows along the eastern side of Bandera.

 

 

We stopped at Jourdanton for a very tasty B-B-Q rib lunch.  Prices were right and the food was plentiful. The decor was very western (like being inside a big log cabin)-this is cowboy country.

 We had been  planning to end our day at Tilden but could not find anyone home at either of the RV "parks". I think these parks maybe have sprung up to provide temporary parking to the pipeliners as we saw a lot of pipeline work going on along the highway today. The town itself did not look too prosperous.

We were lucky to find a roadside parking area further down the road so we decided to call it a day there. Unfortunately, the parking area was right beside a major intersection so there were a lot of big rigs going by all night.

Tomorrow we will make it to Donna and set down there for the winter.