Perfect Timing 
The Ultimate Hill Country Tour
From Devil’s Backbone to Utopia—and, yes, Fredericksburg—here’s a guide to the towns, scenic views, back roads, and all the stops along the way.
(Page 2 of 3)
It was 22 miles from U.S. 281 to Willow City, a wide clearing in the cedar brakes. I stocked up on drinks and munchies at Harry’s on the Loop, the convenience store and beer joint that is the last pit stop before the most scenic stretch of highway in this part of the Hill Country—the Willow City Loop. The 18-mile drive descends to the floodplain of Coal Creek, twisting and turning alongside the creekbed. Along the way, the limestone of the Hill Country yields to the pink-granite boulders of the Llano Uplift. The yucca-speckled cliffs and craggy outcroppings were the sort of terrain that I’d expect to find in the high country of Big Bend, not in northeastern Gillespie County.
The loop ended at Texas Highway 16, and the turnoff to Enchanted Rock was just up the road. Coming in from the north, through Llano County, was worth the roundabout approach for the sight of the humongous granite dome rising 425 feet above the scrub oak, Texas persimmon, Mexican buckeye, and prickly pear along Sandy Creek. Ten thousand years’ worth of human presence has been recorded around the big ol’ chunk, which itself is estimated to be a billion years old. Indians who once lived in the area attributed mystical powers to this batholith, as the rock is technically known, and believed that spirits lived inside it. Enchanted Rock does seem to have an inner life, as I have heard it creak and crack in the evening following a warm day.
Modern pilgrims are discovering that it’s more and more difficult to find an empty pew in this holy church of stone. Since Enchanted Rock was designated a state natural area almost twenty years ago, the visitor count has skyrocketed, exceeding 350,000 last year. State parks officials recently instituted a controlled-entry policy: Whenever the parking lots fill up, which is more often than not the case on spring and early fall weekends, further visitors are barred from entering. I got lucky; even though it was a perfect 70-degree day, a few spaces were still left. I made the ascent (something practically any able-bodied person can do with relative ease) and was rewarded with the best panorama there is of the Hill Country.
I resisted the temptation to drive up to Llano, where Kenneth Laird’s, Cooper’s, and Inman’s heat up the best barbecue in the vicinity, only to encounter road signs bent on luring me to beef-jerky heaven at Rabke’s Table Ready Meats five miles east of Crabapple. In the end, though, I took the roads less traveled: Gillespie County’s extensive network of paved back roads. Making use of the county map provided by the chamber of commerce in Fredericksburg (210-997-6523), I picked my way through undulating farmland toward Cherry Spring. Along the way, I discovered several outstanding examples of the built-to-last German limestone style, including the old Cherry Spring School (Das Alte Schulhaus), the Gothic limestone Christ Lutheran Church, and the magnificent three-story Rode home and its adjacent massive limestone barn. The once-closed Cherry Spring dance hall, with its rough cedar exterior, cedar-plank tables, and posters of Webb Pierce and young Elvis Presley on the wall, reopened on weekends this year. I headed toward Doss on a road that turned out to be a dead end but not a total loss: I conversed with a large flock of talkative sheep, watched an armadillo root for insects at the edge of the road, and spotted upward of a dozen wild turkeys gobbling through the brush.
I gave up on Doss and headed south on U.S. 87 to the Hilltop Cafe. What was once a derelict gas station is now an unpretentious roadhouse diner run by Brenda and Johnny Nicholas that is one of the hot spots in the Hill Country. Brenda and Johnny specialize not in German fare but in Cajun and Greek cuisine, reflecting the couple’s ethnic backgrounds. Memorabilia from Johnny’s days and nights as a touring musician are tacked to the walls and ceiling, and a vintage pinball machine provides the requisite atmosphere, which is sometimes enhanced on weekends by appearances of his musician friends, such as pianists Nick Connally and Floyd Domino and guitarists Stephen Bruton and Steve James. Although reservations are absolutely required when dining on Friday and Saturday nights (book at least two weeks in advance), I arrived in the late afternoon, when there were plenty of tables. I opted for a gyro—a beef and lamb sandwich that would have passed for authentic even in the Plaka in Athens—over the gumbo or the shrimp Mytilini bathed in garlic. It was only ten miles to Fredericksburg, but the difference between rural north Gillespie County and the county seat is measured in more than miles.
Fredericksburg to Kerrville
WITH ITS OUTSTANDING NINETEENTH-CENTURY BUILDINGS (famed Tex-as architect Alfred Giles lived here), its two hundred bed-and-breakfast inns in the Sunday-house tradition, and its unabashed Teutonic flavor, Fredericksburg is the Hill Country’s most charming big town and one of its most historic. Even the facades of the Wal-Mart and McDonald’s have Deutsch-Tex ornamentation. From May 3 through 12, the whole town will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the arrival of John O. Meusebach and 126 German immigrants. But the next morning, I felt that I was already in the midst of a festival. Main Street’s wide sidewalks were clogged with tourists making their way from shop to shop.
Unlike most small towns in America, Fredericksburg’s downtown never did decline. The Palace movie theater still shows first-run films; Dooley’s continues to uphold the tradition of the old five-and-dime; the Olde Thyme Fun Shop stocks whoopee cushions, hand buzzers, plastic vomit, and other timeless jokes, pranks, and magic tricks; the Bauer Toy Museum displays a scale model of League City, circa 1930, and too many old kiddie cars, trucks, trains, guns, and rocking horses to count; and established businesses such as the Dietz and Fredericksburg bakeries operate pretty much the same as they always have.
But on closer inspection, Main Street (a.k.a. Hauptstrasse) has undergone quite a transformation. In addition to the profusion of specialty shops and upscale flea market stalls between the courthouse and the old Steamboat Hotel (now the Admiral Nimitz Museum and Historical Center), there is a cluster of smart, high-end home furnishing stores catering to the new Hill Country style. Another store sells nothing but dulcimers, manufactured in town. At Varney’s Chemist Laden, the retail store on Main for the Fredericksburg Herb Farm, located six blocks away, bottles of herb-flavored vinegars were practically flying out the door. I counted three establishments featuring ice cream and sodas—and one, the Clear River Pecan Company, which touts its fudge, had a line of customers that extended out to the sidewalk. There were no dominoes in the Domino Parlor Antique Shop, nor domino players. All across town, the restaurants were packed, especially the German ones—Friedhelm’s Bavarian Inn, the Plateau Cafe, and upscale Der Lindenbaum. Is it just a matter of time before a Victoria’s Secret, Chili’s, or Godiva chocolates opens for business and T-shirt shops outnumber bakeries?
The thought sent me fleeing to Cross Mountain, on the north side of town. I took a fifteen-minute walk up a path to the top of the tallest hill around, 1,915 feet above sea level, topped by a sheet-metal cross. From this height Fredtown looked serene and postcard-perfect, snuggled into emerald pasture lands. I kept the image with me as I left town and headed east to Luckenbach, hoping to recover from the memory of Main Street’s hordes.
The sylvan scene at Luckenbach was just as I remembered it: The tin store, the town’s business office, the old gin, and the dance hall with its shutters closed hadn’t changed a bit. A couple of ol’ boys pitched washers while a fresh-faced kid in a raggedy cowboy hat was strumming his guitar. An older couple was loading souvenirs into the trunk of a Cadillac with Iowa plates. In fact, about the only new thing in twenty years has been the bust by the front of the store of the late Hondo Crouch, the professional old coot and storyteller who made Luckenbach synonymous with laid-back.
VelAnne Howle, the town manager, confided that keeping Luckenbach laid-back has not been easy. “For a while we had a problem with bikers and drunks, but we’ve got that under control, so families can have a good time here without being harassed.” Howle has expanded the line of T-shirts, postcards, and other souvenirs for sale in the store, where “Sheriff” Marge, the cantankerous barkeep, and Jimmy Lee Jones, her fellow bartender and a Willie Nelson look-alike, serve cold longnecks and soda pop to customers. The venerable dance hall lights up on most Saturday nights. Tish Hinojosa, the Austin country-folk singer-songwriter, will host the Bluebonnet Ball there on April 6.
VelAnne offered to show me the back road to Comfort. She shut down the office and enlisted her assistant, Maggie Montgomery, to accompany us. We headed west on Grapetown Road, passing near the palatial ranch home of Madeleine Stowe and Brian Benben, who are among the many Hollywood celebrities who have bought land around Fredtown. We stopped at Grapetown to admire the arch above the driveway of the Eintracht Schuetzenverein, the 109-year-old shooting hall where the community marksmanship competition is still held every year. Back on the road, Maggie pointed out the abandoned town of Bankersmith, an old rail stop that she said was once “patronized” by train robber Jesse James. We pulled over at the turnoff to Alamo Springs, an aging hippie enclave, to take in the view of the Old Tunnel wildlife management area. I couldn’t see the entrance to the abandoned 920-foot railroad tunnel dug through the hill that divides the Pedernales and Guadalupe river valleys, but Maggie told me that at sunset you can see the tunnel’s colony of bats emerge. On Saturday and Thursday evenings from June to October, Parks and Wildlife guides lead tours to the tunnel entrance (call Blanco State Park, 210-833-4333, for information).
VelAnne said Comfort was her favorite German town in the Hill Country, not as well preserved as Fredericksburg but a whole lot looser in attitude. Settled by radical Free Thinkers from Germany, who fled political and religious persecution, the town sets itself apart by having the state’s only Civil War monument to the North on a public street: the Treue der Union monument on the west end of High Street, commemorating the loyalist soldiers of German descent who were killed by Confederate troops at the Battle of the Nueces in 1862.
My Library
