13-15 November 2020 Houston Music and Art Festival

 Leslie found a festival close to our winter home back in September and signed us up for it. It was a chance to get all our Boot Jazz stuff out and hopefully sell some merchandise.  It is the first festival in the area that was not canceled at the last minute although the dates and venue had apparently changed multiple times over the summer. It’s an outdoor festival that was held at Town Green park. This was the first time this park had hosted this festival. On Friday we were able to load in. Friday morning we sorted through the Boot Jazz boxes and loaded the truck up with the items for setting up Leslie’s Boot Jazz booth. Although set up was not supposed to start until noon and sites were first come first serve, when we arrived at 12:30 (got held up due to traffic), most of the sites had already been claimed and many folks were close to finishing up! Lessoned learned, times set out by the host mean nothing. Luckily we found a good site near a power plug. It took us three hours to get the booth setup. Along the way we met some of the neighboring vendors. We somehow ended up next to the Dominoes pizza vendor, but luckily they were not doing any cooking (thoughts of kettle corn were running through our head) but bringing the pizzas in from off site. We finished up our set up and headed back for home. Saturday morning we were on site by 10am to finish our setup with Leslie’s boot bracelets and necklaces, along with her real necklaces. Then we sat and waited for festival goers! And we waited. And we waited. Saturday was pretty disappointing. Probably less than 400 people came through and we sold nothing. The other vendors around us sold nothing either. There was one vendor near us selling brightly colored Tutu’s and another was selling puppets that drew the families in and they had some sales. Cynthia, Felix, Lauren, Olivia and Avery stopped by to visit. Olivia showed off her new tutu for us! 

We got a chance to talk with our neighbors a lot and many were very interested in, even envious of, our RV lifestyle. Most were staying in hotels for the festival. We made several new friendships amongst the vendors and helped each other with some set up issues and even with covering each other’s booth while they went out to get some food or the bathroom. Many of the folks we met depend on the festival circuit for their living and with all the festivals being closed due to COVID restrictions, they were desperate for some income.  

 

Sunday was not much better. We arrived to find our booth had sustained damage from the winds when the storm blew through last night,. But it was not too bad and we had things back in order in a hour or so. A few more people came through and we were able to sell three boot bracelets. Two jewelry vendor’s near us that Leslie became friends with, Alena (from Santa Fe) and Suzanna, both made enough sales to cover their costs, but not much in the way of profit. David became friends with Wayne, the husband of the Tutu vendor, since he was dabbling in wood working product sales and they were from near Fort Worth. So it was not a lonely day. At 5PM all the vendors started tearing down. Trying to finish before it got really dark and it was a mad house. People dragging stuff to the edges of the park to try to load up since at first they would not let us bring our vehicles back into the park. By the time we had gotten tore down and our stuff dragged to the nearby library parking lot, they started letting people in with their vehicles. It was not a very well run festival. After we loaded up, we went back and helped Suzanna load up her booth since she was by herself. All in all, we lost money on the festival, but it was good to get back in the swing of things. We think a combination of lack of advertising and the dramatically increasing COVID cases in the area resulted in so low of an attendance.

If your interested in Leslie's Jewelry: BootJazz.com

Boot Jazz booth

Our Vendor row

1 November 2020 Fredericksburg to Spring, TX

 Well, it was time to head for our winter layover. We took US290 across the south side of Austin to TX71 down to I-10. That avoided the construction on I-10 and dealing with downtown San Antonio. We are staying at Rayford Crossing RV resort just like the last two winters. We stopped at a roadside park on TX71 for a lunch break where a fort had once been built in the early 1800s to thwart Indian raids. It was not well marked and poorly maintained but an interesting find along the drive.  Otherwise the drive was uneventful.  

So this ends our travel year. If we do anything fun or exciting we will post something. Otherwise we expect to hit the road next March and will begin regal postings again then. Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. Lets hope next year is more fun than this year has been!

Home Sweet Home for the next four months

31 October 2020 Fat Ass and Garage Wine!

 With only one day left, we wanted to try a winery with an interesting name. We had passed it a couple of times, Fat Ass Ranch Winery. With a name like that, we had to check it out. As we walked up from the parking lot, we noticed they had a live band playing rock n roll. We had to wait our turn to get a tasting. When we told the host we preferred dry reds, she shook her head. They specialize to fruity and sweet wines. They only had one dry red. Definitely not worth paying for a tasting. She recommended we go next door to the Wine Garage winery, which she said had several good reds. But we really wanted to listen to the band for a while, so we bought a couple of glasses their lone red wine and found a table to sit at to listen to the band. We could not remember the last time we had heard a live rock band. After finishing our wines, we drove over to the Wine Garage. We were very surprised by the Wine Garage. The decor was great and the red wines were very good! The interior has the look of a garage with antique cars parked around. One wall has murals of some of the most epic car movies. We had fun trying to identify them. We left with several bottles of red wines and a desire to return in the future. 

Howard Huge at the Wine Garage

They'll Get Ya Lubed!

30 October 2020 Becker Vineyard

 We had been to the Becker wine tasting room in downtown on previous trips and enjoyed their wines. But we wanted to go out to the main winery this time. We got lucky and it was not busy, else we would have required reservations. They were still working under their COVID rules, so they were serving bites of food along with their wine tastings. The food pairings were fantastic and really brought out the character of the wines. We really enjoyed the tasting and the views were great. We definitely will be back to visit again. 

29 October 2020 Alexander Vineyard

 Leslie has been wanting to checkout Alexander winery for a couple of trips, so we made it a point to get there this time. They import their wines from Europe, so they are not Texas wines. We did a tasting of their dry reds. We had a fun time talking to our hostess as she and her husband are ex-military and moved to Texas to get away from California. The wines were ok and we bought a couple of bottles but it is not a place we would return too

28 October 2020 Old Tunnel State Park

 David had the afternoon off from his consulting work, so we decided to investigate another state park. Old Tunnel State Park is the smallest state park in the Texas system at only 16 acres. The tunnel is an old railroad tunnel that was built in 1908 for a rail line between Fredericksburg and Austin. The rail line 

closed in 1943. The park was opened in 1991. Its claim to fame is the 3 million Mexican bats that live in the tunnel between May and October. The tunnel is not accessible to hikers. We walked the short nature trail and saw a deer along the walk.

Entrance Sign

The Old Tunnel

26 October 2020 Shopping

Having scouted out the shops earlier we headed back to downtown to do some more shopping. We of course were looking for Christmas presents but also some goodies for ourselves.   We also noticed that they had erected the town Christmas Pyramid as well as their Christmas Tree. We then went out to the Fredericksburg Brewery and taste a sampling of their beers. We were not overwhelmed. 

Town Christmas Tree

Town Christmas Pyramid

25 October 2020 LBJ State Park and National Historic Park

 We have been to the Fredericksburg area multiple times and always talked about going to the Lyndon Johnson Ranch but never actually made it there. So we decided to check it out this time. LBJ Ranch is part of two parks. A portion of it is a Texas State Park and another portion of the ranch is a National Historic Park. Most of the ranch, over 200 acres of it, are still owned by the descendants of LBJ. The ranch house was called the Texas White House due to LBJ liking to host meetings 

and dignitaries on the ranch. It has a small airfield that they would fly LBJ to the ranch on what he referred to as Air Force ½ since it was a small business jet (Air Force one was too big for the runway on the ranch). LBJ was also an active rancher and bred Hereford cows on the ranch that he would then sell as breeding stock to other ranchers. The ranch house was closed due to COVID as well as structural issues with the old house, but we did get to tour the museum in the National Historic Park and drove around the ranch areas open to the public. We then went back to the state park and toured the historic ranch and buildings from some of the original German settlers to the area. 

State Park Entrance Sign

Historical Park entrance sign

Air Force 1/2

Texas White House

24 October 2020 Hill Country Loop

 We decided to head down to Lost Maples state park for a hike. We hoped the leaves might be changing already. We drove on down to Kerrville and stopped in Bills BBQ for some good Hill Country BBQ. The place is not much to look at, but the food is great. From Kerrville, we headed south on TX39 along the Guadalupe River to TX187 north along the Sabinal River. Lost Maples State Park is along the Sabinal river. We pulled into the park and were stopped by a park ranger. It seems that many state parks now require reservations to limit the number of people in the park. Of course we did not have a reservation and there were none available until about the time we are leaving. We could see that some of the leaves were starting to change but they were at least 2-3 weeks away from prime leaf peak. So we head back out and took TX187 to TX16 north back to Kerrville. It's a quaint essential Texas Hill Country drive. We were disappointed we did not get in a hike but still enjoyed the drive. 

Now thats a real BBQ pit!!

Bill's BBQ!

23 October 2020 Luckenbach Texas

Having heard the song about Luckenbach Texas so many times, we decided we had to visit there. We were expecting something like Gruene Texas, a small tourist town with old buildings. What we found was a collection of 4 old buildings and that was about it! They did have a dance hall that was roped off due to COVID. A general store that had also been the Post office, a take out short order restaurant and a bar. The good part was they had a live folk band playing and Shiner on tap. So we grabbed a burger and a beer and sat down to enjoy the band. Leslie found a hat she wanted in the little store out behind the Post Office. A relaxing afternoon.

Lückenbach Concert Venue

Luckenbach Post Office