Posts Tagged ‘ mini ’

Now that we neither one work for a university, our holiday cycles have shifted. For example, Emil had to work late for this year’s election day (He works for the County Clerk), but Veterans’ Day was a county holiday. So, he planned a wonderful little mid-November mini-vacay for us…to Fredericksburg.

Wednesday morning, we slept in, loaded the car, took a scenic drive, and were in town by 2pm. We found the headquarters for the B&B and checked in. Our cabin was ~15 minutes out of town on 21 acres. It was peaceful bliss.

The outdoor shower is amazing, even in November.

As soon as we had the car unloaded, we sat in the rockers on the front porch and watched the birds and butterflies. The weather was just perfect—~70 degrees and a gorgeous day—so there was much to see.

We made a few little and tentative plans for the evening. We hadn’t had a vacation in a long time and have rarely had one that didn’t have an agenda of events to attend and sights to see. It was nice to have four days with nothing particular to do. We’ve been to Fredericksburg several times. We’ve seen the shops and toured the wineries. This time, we were here without much new to see.

We headed into town for dinner at the Rathskeller. Lori had a glass of Columbia Crest Shiraz and the avocado crab dip, which turned out to be our server’s favorite menu item. Emil had the Weiner Schnitzel with buttered noodles (shocker, huh?). Our meal was fabulous! There were six desserts on the menu that all sounded wonderful as well. So, when we are craving sweets, that will be one of the first places we think of.

We returned to our cabin to take advantage of the amenities. The dew had already begun to settle, so without dry wood, we had to postpone a fire, but the sky was 100% clear and the stars were the brightest we’d seen in a very long time. We stargazed on the front porch and had a little mini-scrabble tournament with our own flex on the rules and no scoring. We determined the winner by who went out first. Lori won both matches. Once we crawled into bed, we were both goners. The bed had one of those Tempurdepic mattress toppers. The only way to describe this bed is to say that it “eats” you. At 5am Lori awoke to the cold (it was probably ~40 degrees outside and we slept with the windows open), so we watched dawn creep up and watched the sunrise all while still bundled under the covers.

We went for an early breakfast at Taqueria Altos de Jalisco’s. It was fabulous. Then, we drove to the Old Tunnel where we saw our first bat emergence a few years ago. The sign said they had emerged the night before, but only took ~10 minutes to leave the tunnel; the season had, technically, passed. We decided it probably wasn’t worth a visit at night. We walked down to the tunnel viewing area, saw the few bats that haven’t migrated, yet, and then took a scenic drive back to our cabin with a little stop at the visitor’s center for more information about the Nimitz museum (and the new part that is supposed to open in December) and other area attractions.

We spent the afternoon riding our bikes around the property, viewing the other cabin still under construction, and seeing the new bridge that the neighbor is building to cross a creek. We also spent another chunk of time watching the birds and butterflies. Again, it was great to have nothing to do!

bike trail

Thursday evening, we went into town for dinner and some German beer and then came back to the cabin. Emil was victorious in 3-out-of-4 games: Scrabble (with scores this time), Ticket to Ride, and the first of two rounds of dominos.

Friday the 13th started off true to fame. We were going to have breakfast at Andy’s, but it wasn’t in the cards. The place was crowded with only two servers. Of course, as luck would have it on this day, we got the much slower, weaker, forgetful server. She wanted us to want coffee and juice and was befuddled that we did not. Then, she was ready to take our order before we had read the menu. We asked for just one minute, but she never returned. We watched her take the order of several other tables, skipping us every time. We looked around, held our menus over to the side, and made eye contact with the other server. It felt like she couldn’t serve us because we didn’t fit the mold of coffee-drinking breakfast diners—-and we weren’t even the youngest people in the place! Emil’s comment was, “Clearly, she’s never played Diner Dash!” So, we headed back to Taqueria Altos de Jalisco’s where we knew we’d get good food and good service.

And then came the massages from Above and Beyond Day Spa. Emil signed us up for massages (a first for both of us) at our cabin. Mmmmmm.

The massage therapists had gotten lost on the way to our cabin and said there were some buffalo about three miles north of us. So, after the “massage-hangover” subsided a bit, we hoped in the car to go see them. They weren’t near the fence along the road, though, and we never found them. Instead we made the loop around to Enchanted Rock. Emil hadn’t been since he was a kid and Lori had never seen it. Eventhough we weren’t dressed for it, we made the short-but-not-easy hike to the summit. From the parking lot it was a 465’ climb over .6 miles. The top is at 1800’ and offers some fantastic views of the Hill Country.

The way back from Enchanted Rock led us back into town too early for supper, so we headed out to Luckenbach. It felt a little like a petting zoo this time. A guy with a longhorn and saddle was loading up his prop photo business as we arrived. One of the resident cats, Miss Kitty, let us love on her for at least a minute or two. And, the chickens and roosters were very active and quite entertaining to watch. It was nearing sunset, and they were getting ready to roost. It was funny to watch them go from the ground to a table to a roof to the limbs of the tree. Some of them even preferred to be way up in the tree and not just on the first branch they could reach.

When it started to get chilly, we headed back to town for supper. Dinner at Kelly’s Café was amazing.

After such an active afternoon, we were both ready to go back to our cabin for more of the R&R part of our trip. We each won one game of Ticket to Ride and then Lori beat Emil in two dominos matches.

We sank into bed early and then slept in on Saturday morning. We got up just in time to pack up, check out, have a leisurely breakfast, and get on the road to Austin for a big game day: a Miami watch party at the Daily Grill and the Settlers of Catan board game group at Dragon’s Lair.