Touring the Hill Country

John and Judi are both busy people, so we took off today for a ride west to Fredricksburg. We followed a route in one of our ride guides that took us to Bee Cave and then Dripping Springs. The windy roads and gentle hills made a very pleasant ride today.

After following scenic and windy Creek Road for nine miles, our route led into the Pedernales Falls State Park. The falls were dramatic without being spectacular. The strong whirlpools discouraged swimming.

The warnings say that this peaceful scene can change dramatically within 5 mins.

 

Passing through Johnson City on Highway 290 we passed Lyndon B Johnson's ranch 15 miles down the road. We soon reached Fredricksburg and turned north without stopping.
Our noses took us to Ronnies BBQ for lunch.

The animals we saw on the journey included horses, cows, goats, deer, sheep and a runaway llama patrolling the road.

There was plenty of cactus.

We were expecting Susan (a friend from the metal artists group) and her husband Mark to arrive from Dallas at John and Judi's at 4 pm, so we were running to a schedule that didn't have a sightseeing allowance built in.

At Willow Creek we turned east on the homebound leg through a small town pretentiously named Willow City.We stopped for refreshments at a service station in Marble City. We saw another rider on a BMW R1150 RT stop for petrol and went over to talk bikes.

We hit it off instantly with Ron, and when we found out we were both heading in the same direction, agreed to ride together.

 
He was heading home from his ride and invited us back to his home for a beer. His wife is an avid quilter.

Heading off we made a beeline for John and Judi's. Judi had a girls' night out with former work colleagues, but Mark and Susan were there to greet us.

We had a barbeque dinner, drank rather a lot of beer and wine and had a raging good time. Mark demonstrated a few card tricks before we all decided to play a game of cards.
John relaxed enough to show us some of his artmetal castings.

We suddenly realised it was 1:30 am. Although Mark and Susan are party people it all suddenly lost momentum and we crashed. Inflating an air bed was not an easy task. Nor did it stay inflated during the night.