Standing down on Main Street, Across from Mr. Blues

A hill country weekend was in order for our last little trip before the baby comes (please don't call it a babymoon...). So, we piled ourselves, our dogs, and my enormous, unwieldy pregnancy pillow into the car bright and early on Friday morning. Our plan was to wind our way down to Bandera for lunch, taking our time on a meandering scenic route we'd only semi-plotted out. I've traveled plenty of hill country roads in my time, but never gone on the tiniest backroads like we did on this gorgeous day.


We stopped and tried to get some dog pictures in these pretty flowers - one of the only carpets of wildflowers we saw this year, sadly - but there were some curious horses standing at the fence across the way that were much more enticing to Thing One and Thing Two. We ended up with one zillion pictures of those two by the end of the weekend, so it didn't end up mattering much.


When I say meander, I do mean meander. I realized about 15 minutes after we got back in the car that I'd left my scarf on the side of the road. I'd taken it off while trying to dog wrangle and photograph in the blustery wind. So, back we went. Then I pointed us in the wrong direction because I got confused by the little dot on my iPhone. So those were some nice little detours. Woops. Luckily, me and the Sweet Man Who Puts Up With Me didn't have anywhere to be until later that afternoon.


Here's Bandera! Made it here by noon, which I'm pretty sure was much later than our original projected arrival, but it was a gorgeous drive. We ate lunch at a little saloon that our friend Amanda had recommended, which had a patio with a nice view of town where we could sit with the dogs and have a burger and a Shiner (well, one of us had the beer - the other stared longingly at it - truly nothing beats a Shiner on a hot Texas day).






Bandera is still a cowboy town, the kind of place where you might just as easily ride your horse into town as drive your truck. Lots of hitching posts all over, and some of the friendliest people you'll ever meet. I didn't get a ton of great shots here, due to the leashed terrier/belly/waddle combo I had going on while walking around town. Everything's a little more cumbersome these days.


Bandera is also the town that is featured in "Feelin' Good Again," a Robert Earl Keen song that's one of my all-time favorites. We wandered around town a bit after lunch, popping into little art galleries and antiques shops and such, then started our afternoon drive north - we actually had a few appointments to keep this afternoon!