All Who Wander are not Lost

On the day after Thanksgiving it was misty/rainy here, and we decided to drive the 25 miles north to Fredericksburg and shop or eat or both. You will be relieved to know that we managed both. We found lots of "Hi, we are here and came to visit presents" and lots of nostalgia type candy that HW2 liked as a kid, and me, too. Best of all, we found the sign which had the message, "All who wander are not lost." Well, we certainly had to have that, and now the sign graces our front window to amuse all the other walkers who come by our motor home. We found a restaurant that served superb German food (Fredericksburg was settled by German immigrants), and settled in for a good lunch of schnitzel and cabbage and hot mashed German potatoes. A slice of white chocolate cake finished us off, as we watched our waitress hurry too quickly around our corner, causing a dish of red cabbage to go flying onto the people next to us. It was a mess, but they seemed to take it in stride, although her tip might have been lowered. We staggered back to the car and drove home.

On Saturday we drove to San Antonio to visit their botanical gardens, as they had advertised in the paper that they had set up five working garden train exhibits (you know I like garden trains) and a poinsettia display. We had a bit of a time finding the gardens but persisted. The buildings that contained the train displays were very modernistic and reminded us of I. M. Pei's (glass pyramids) work in Paris. The trains were primarily just ovals and had engines and cars running around. It was fun although a bit rainy, and so we did not visit other portions of the gardens. We will save that for a later visit. Then lunch was followed by Christmas shopping, and we headed through the rain back to Kerrville. We had been promised rain and possible sleet or snow for the night but only got rain, which the hill country really needs. This area was very dry until this rain, which should lower the fire danger threat. It seems that we are now ahead of the curve on Christmas shopping although there is still more to do. The crowds had been crazy on Friday but were back to normal on Saturday, thank goodness. Our local wanderings produced two good lunches and lots of shopping, which made HW2 happy.