My grandpa and Laurie Lou took my 9 year old cousin and I on a trip throughout Texas last week mainly to see the beautiful wild flowers but also adventure)!
Our first stop after leaving the house was Brenham, Texas, home of Bluebell Ice Cream! It was such a cool experience to see a factory--I had never visited one. The process of making the ice cream is really complex and neat, especially considering Bluebell originated as a butter creamery then started making 2 gallons of ice cream a day for the locals in 1911. Now they make thousands of gallons a day, and the gallons/cones/pints/etc. leave the factory within 6 hours of being packaged. Super fresh! While in Brenham we also ate a delicious seafood joint called Sealand. I had a delicious grilled salmon and raw oysters. On our drive there we stopped at Washington on the Brazos where Texans signed their independence from Mexico.
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| Beautiful Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrushes |
Next we traveled to the town with German roots called Fredericksburg where we ate some pretty good German food, and where I met Robert J. Waller. Mr. Waller is a good friend of my grandpa and world known author. His most famous book is The Bridges of Madison County. He was incredibly intelligent! I enjoyed listening to him talk. He shared a song with us and the lyrics were beautiful, I hope it gets recorded by a well known, respectable artist. I loved his wife Linda. She was very free spirited, artistic, and lovely! On our way there we stopped at Camp Verde, which is the site of the U.S. Department of War's camel experiment during the 1800's! You can read more about it Here. We also visited Luchenbach which has a population of 3 and is a town known for country music. It was a very interesting place to visit. The hill country of Texas is beautiful! I love it and highly recommend visiting this area.
From there we traveled to San Antonio. I had never been to San Antonio so I had a lovely time seeing this city. My Great Great Uncle ran a fish market there back in the 1940s/50s so it was cool to see the street and area where he would have been. It was also nice to see the Alamo, and learn of Texas Independence. Cool fact: The Alamo started as a Catholic mission back in the 1700's. We were very lucky that there weren't many tourists so that I could get this lovely shot.
We ate at this amazing Mexican restaurant called Mi Tierra which is located at the Marketplace. Oh myyy goodness! Those were the best enchiladas pollo verde. Then the next morning for breakfast we got some fresh pastries and cookies. They were all tasty! But I particularly loved the pina empanada. From our tasty breakfast we went to the San Antonio Zoo for a few hours and that was a treat! There were some amazing animals there that I had never seen or heard of. Like this amazing Okapi! It is it's own breed of animal, but has the head and similar body as a giraffe and coloring/legs of a zebra! 
From San Antonio we went to Indianola which was once a major port back in its day. From 1846-1847 they had over 5,000 German immigrants come settle in the area. Two major hurricanes came through within a decade of each other and completely wiped out the town. There isn't much there to see or do, but I thoroughly enjoyed imagining the history and seeing the little bit of ruins they do have. Hope to go back in January with my favorite travel partners, Pa and Laurie! We went to an awesome county museum in Port Lavaca that had some great artifacts of the history of the area and a model of what Indianola looked like in it's prime. We stayed at a bay front property that was adorable! Perfect little 2-bedroom. While it was a rental there was a for sale sign. Since we like the area so much we looked into to see how much it cost... and you wouldn't believe it but it cost a wopping $292,000! There is literally nothing there...I can't imagine paying that much for a little 900 square foot home even if it is close to a "beach" and has a water view. The coastline has receded about 2 blocks since the mid to late 1800's so I hope there is still an Indianola in a few decades.
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| Statue of LaSalle, French explorer of America who reinvigorated the area in the 1600s. Learn about here Here |
Now we are on to our last stop, Galveston. We took the scenic route to Galveston and saw some cool things like Shanghai Pierce's grave and a historic old hotel. Once inn Galveston we ate some delicious shrimp at 'Shrimp and Stuff' then went and rode a few rides at Pleasure Pier. My little cousin rode his first rollercoaster! It was so fun to be on there with him and encourage him to ride! He is around the same age I was when I rode my first coaster. Such a great memory to make! The picture is hilarious of us coming down from the drop. I will have to add it to this once I make a digital copy of it. This was my first time seeing Galveston since the destruction of Hurricane Ike. It has really recovered since then! Looks even better than I remember it from my last visit about 8 years ago.
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| Pleasure Pier! |
The next day I took the cousin to the beach, then we walked along Seawall Boulevard. We went to the edge of the island and saw the ships moving stuff along. It was quite windy out and the sky was very ominous. We missed the rain luckily, but it sure looked gloomy. We ate at Rainforest Cafe for the boy, took the ferry across and headed home.
This was a perfect trip because we saw many different places, experienced nature, learned new things, ate good food, and had great conversations. I am so blessed that I was able to go. I hope that I can treat Pa and Laurie to a vacation that is just as sweet.
Words cannot express how fortunate I am to have this opportunity... I get to connect with my family on a deeper and get to do work I truly enjoy while having a flexible schedule! And my boss takes me away on awesome vacations! I am so glad this is where life has lead me.
My work is coming along! I think we have at least 2 years of sorting, organizing, and compiling to do though! But that's a-okay by me! I love learning about my ancestors because I know I am still learning from them today since they shape my grandpa and mother into who they are today. I hope to start typing a little something that I have learned about my relatives *everyday. Not only for you to get a better sense of who they were, but for me to look back on remember this amazing time in my life.
I will write soon! Hope you enjoyed hearing of my adventures and that you see the beauty that is the hill country of Texas one day if you haven't already, and that you can reminisce fondly of these areas if you have had the pleasure of seeing them.
Love,
Alyssa
P.S. Please excuse typos and missing words... it's been a long day and I don't feel like editing just yet. :p
Have a lovely rest of your week!
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