Last year was Julie and my 25th wedding anniversary. And we had a kid graduate from high school. So we put the anniversary on the back burner and promised ourselves we would do something special this year.
Well this year the world continues to become more complicated, so we looked for places to explore close-ish to home. Several months ago I was looking at a map of Texas’ regions and noticed one labeled “South Texas Brush Country”. I don’t think this was an official term, but it got me thinking, “What made that different from West Texas or South Texas”?
Julie was similarly intrigued. So we found a big enough town for a hotel and restaraunts that could meet our dietary restrictions and then looked for state parks. We setteled on Seminole Canyon State Park and History Site and Kickapoo Cavern State Park.
Heading to Del Rio was fun. We hit one of our favorite San Antonio restaruants - Vegan Avenue, and then did some vintage shopping. We never head west out of San Antonio so we hadn’t been to the Alsatian bakery - “Haby’s”.
We headed out and had another stop for vintage shopping at Homer’s on the Square in Uvalde. Uvalde is still a hard place to visit.
Then we headed towards Del Rio. As we headed west we got to see the brush country. A lot of ranches rather than being cleared had dense thickets of bushes with nothing much more than 8 feet tall. Mountain Laurels and cenizo were everywhere. On the way in we passed Lackland Airforce Base, and a jet of some kind took off right in front of us. It was really fast and as I am married to a woman who wanted to be a fighter pilot this may have been her favorite moment of the trip. We spent the night and then headed out to, but had to pass through a border patrol stop on our way to
Seminole Canyon State Park
Once we knew where we were going we signed up for the Fate Bell Shelter Tour. Just a heads up. When they say it’s a bit intense they’re not lying. While it has very well developed stairs, it’s a LOT of stairs in direct Texas sun. This is coming from someone who likes to run in the afternoon heat. Our tour was the last before the heat breaks in the fall.
I don’t want to spoil the cave art with my bad photography. When they say it’s spectacular, they’re not joking. The artists did some very large art over a lot of space and used 4 different colors of paint. It’s worth the trip. But there are border checkpoints on the way, so obviously not everyone can.
But plants!
The number of beautiful delciate flowers growing in rocks was unreal. When you see the overall view it looks very harsh, but there are so many delicate plants.
After being out in the sun all morning we went back for showers and spent the day exploring Del Rio. And we did that! Yes we did. All explored.
Kickapoo Cavern State Park
Our third day we headed out early. Because of the route we were going we went through Bracketsville. North of Bracketsville was a border patrol stop. It was not the professional border patrol agents. One of the agents walked to the car with his finger on the trigger of an AR-15. There were so few cars on the road it felt like an “accident” could find our bodies in a ditch. I wouldn’t really recommend going that way to anyone. It was unpleasant and being near the Alamo film set it felt appropriate to highlight that the brutal, violent history of Texas is not the past.
I can’t decide if either of these parks are worth the risk, but they are amazing.
They even have tiny pine cones.
In any case, we were both really glad we went. This was very different country from Big Bend or the Hill Country. As we drove into Kerrville on 10 it really it HOW different it was.
