Dancehall Dreamers.....Gruene-style

For my last tourist stop before heading north on I-35 to Dallas (home), I stopped in the town of Gruene (pronounced "Green"). It is located on the north side of New Braunfels, TX. It is home to the oldest, continually operating dancehall in the state of Texas. Gruene Hall has been instrumental in starting the careers of Lyle Lovett, George Strait, Hal Ketchum and others. Also appearing at Gruene Hall have been The Dixie Chicks, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Garth Brooks and Willie Nelson. And Nolan Ryan held his 50th birthday party there! Gruene Hall was also featured in the John Travolta movie "Michael" - the dance scene was filmed there.

In my head, I thought it would be much bigger, considering George Strait got his start there, but I guess if he was a nobody at the time, it wouldn't need to be big! Anyway, when I went in (it's a bar and open all day as well, so you can go there anytime - the music acts play at night) I was surprised at how small it is! It's just a wood barn-type building with a small stage and then long wood tables (with lots of graffiti carved in them) with benches to sit on. There's an open space up near the stage for dancing and then 2 old pool tables along the side. It was very primitive, but that's the whole point - that's what gives it charm!

Here are my pics from Gruene Hall:

This is the front bar part:

Wow - personalized neon lights (there are a LOT of them in Texas - very cool):

Here's that 'Texas pride' thing again......

Here's the stage:

Here's a view of the stage, looking down one of the big long tables with graffiti:

Here's a shot from stage-right, looking to the back bar:

A view from the back door:

They even still have the old-school cigarette machines with the little knobs that you pull out to 'vend' your own cigarettes! And it's personalized for "Gruene Hall" - in that black strip on the front of it!

This is a signed picture of George Strait - his first album cover:

This next one is the back cover of this first album - the picture was taken in Gruene Hall...

...and here is my picture of the exact spot George Strait was standing in that picture!

After I had all of that excitement in the dancehall, I was hungry.....so I ate at the Gristmill Restaurant (Mayce and my friend Erin both recommended it). It overlooks the Guadalupe River and it kind of felt like a treehouse! It's 3 floors high, I think, and it's kind of like a maze in there. They have wood-burning fireplaces going, so it smells amazing and it's all wood floors. It was such a cool atmosphere!

Here's a view from the 2nd floor balcony, looking down onto the first floor by the entrance:

After lunch, I decided to go shopping in all the cool gift shops and antique stores on the main drag...then it was time to hit the road and get back to Maggie in Big D. What a great trip!

Down Under

After visiting my Mom, I headed north to San Antonio to break up the drive. In the morning, I drove a few miles up 35 to the Natural Bridge Caverns, which are the largest caverns in Texas and located between San Antonio and New Braunfels. I took a tour of the caverns and it was soooo interesting!


Here's a picture of the the outside, or top, of the caverns. It's how they picked the name - this little 'bridge' is actually the old ceiling of the caverns - the rest collapsed when the water table dropped and the pressure was higher outside the caverns than the inside. This 'bridge' was the only part of the ceiling that didn't collapse, so they named it Natural Bridge Caverns.


Our tour guide was fantastic and I learned a lot down inside the caverns - it was sooo cool! All I kept thinking was that I felt like I was in the movie Goonies because we were down about 200 feet below the ground and the 'ceilings' down in the caverns were soooo high and it was all natural cave formations - I expected to see One-Eyed Willie in a big ship, with LOTS of gold coins!! I love that movie!

The only bad things about the tour were that it was 99% humidity (I'm not exaggerating, that's the number that they told us - it's like that year-round. DISGUSTING!!) and the fact that there were three 2-year-olds that screamed the whole time. ANNOYING. When the tour guide finally asked one of the Moms if she wanted to go back out of the caverns because her child was obviously NOT happy.....this Mom had the audacity to just say, "Oh, she's OK. She just wants her pacifier and we're not giving it to her because we're trying to ween her off of it" (then giggles like it's cute or something). ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? You took a small child (who won't understand or remember this tour) down into an echoing cavern for almost 2 hours and expect us to be OK with that child screaming because you feel like weening her off the pacifier today??? UGH.

Anyway, I'm glad I went on the tour and there were some amazing views down there!

Here are my pics: (and they don't do it justice)

Will The Real U.S. Citizen Please Stand Up

I'm not sure if my northern readers are exposed to all of the news about drug cartel business on the Texas/Mexico border right now. It's always been around, but lately it has gotten VERY bad. I don't watch the news that much, but my Mom definitely does - she likes it....and she lives right next to the border, so it's important that she knows what's going on.

Every year when I visit, we go shopping right over the Mexican border in Nuevo Progreso. It's a very easy walk across a big bridge (over the natural country border of the Rio Grande River). There, of course, is Immigration and Border Patrol stations there, with armed border police - normal to see that.

There are turnstiles to get into Mexico and it costs 25 cents to go through the turnstiles and that's it - no I.D. checking, no nothing - they don't care. Afterall, almost everyone that is walking across the bridge is going to be spending U.S. money over there, so they welcome the visitors with open arms (it's mostly elderly from the northern states that are 'wintering' down in south Texas). You can drive over the bridge, but my Mom refuses - she says that her car will 'disappear' and be disassembled and sold for parts. Maybe she's right?

Anyway, we paid our 25 cents and headed into Mexico this year like usual, but I was surprised to see that the Mexican police were checking cars - not something I have seen before.... (see pic below)

There's also a sign on the U.S. side right before you would drive over the bridge (see below) that says it's illegal to bring guns into Mexico......right, right. One of my co-workers is from El Paso (FAR west Texas, right where Texas, Mexico and New Mexico come together) and he said that basically all along the border, drugs are coming from Mexico to the U.S. and that tons of weapons are going from the U.S. to Mexico. That's the 'traffic pattern'. I asked him what touristy things I would find in El Paso (for another LONG roadtrip) and he said that the mountains are pretty over there and then New Mexico is right there, so there are cool things to see there......but he said I SHOULD NOT cross the border into Juarez under ANY circumstance. The drug/weapon trade is SO bad there that he knew somebody that went over the border into Mexico, got shot for suspected involvement in some bad stuff. He didn't die, but was taken to the hospital and went straight to the operating room to undergo surgery. The 'bad guys' actually followed him to the hospital, busted into the operating room, and shot him 4 more times on the operating table during surgery - with the surgeon and nursing staff right there - THAT killed him. AH!

So anyway, I'm glad my friend told me that AFTER I got back from south Texas. And also - the manager of the place where my Mom lives down there came up to her on Thursday night when I arrived and said that if we were planning on going to Mexico to shop, we can't go on Saturday. Apparently it's gotten so bad that for the next 4 Saturdays, they were shutting down the bridge to pedestrian and car traffic. No shoppers in Mexico! At that point, my Mom got worried, but I convinced her that I needed some new jewelry and wanted to find a cool pot for my back porch, so we went. I'm not sure if we're brave or really stupid!!

SOOOO, by the time we were back in Texas, I didn't think about the whole border thing much more, but when I went to drive north out of town - heading to San Antonio for the night......I hit another border issue: a border patrol check point! It was about 2 hours north of the border and all of a sudden traffic just came to a stop. I figured there was a big accident and I was really annoyed because I just wanted to get north to San Antonio before nightfall. Anyway, as we inched along for a while, it became apparent that it wasn't an accident, but a border patrol check point where they make every car stop, they ask if you are a U.S. citizen and they have drug dogs there, sniffing every single car that goes through (I passed).

Here are my pics of the experience: (And yes, I'm even a tourist during serious federal matters)

Home On The (KING-Sized) Range

After being amused by how LITTLE Luckenbach was, I drove through San Antonio and a little southeast of there, to arrive at Kingsville, home of the King Ranch! It is a MASSIVE ranch in south Texas - 825,000 acres! They do ranching, farming, breeding, and even have their own rodeo facility on-site. They also have a meat processing center on the property and there are enough employees that live on the ranch, that they have a school on the ranch, with a yellow school bus that picks up all the kids! I saw it with my own eyes when I was there - man, does a yellow school bus look weird on a ranch full of horses and cattle!

Here is a picture of one of the 'residences' on the ranch - where ranchers live on-site.

And the symbol for the ranch is a "running W" - the symbol that's on the sign above. That is their specific brand. They even fly a flag with their brand on it!

Here is a very cool tree that is just outside the visitors center - how neat!

And of course, there are areas on the ranch that us tourists cannot go.....

Isn't this a beautiful horse?! This is exactly what I pictured a King Ranch horse to look like!

And what's a ranch without cattle?? Here are some cows stopping for a drink in a HUGE 'water bowl'! And our tour guide said that they do not try to control or eliminate their cactus population because in cases of a depression or drought, they can burn off the pokey, spikey things on the cactus and then have the cattle eat the cactus to stay alive (it is a good source of water, sugar and phospherous). Interesting, huh?

What're you lookin' at?!

Here is a picture of the main residence on the ranch. It's an 18-bedroom house that is beautiful! This is the front porch.....or as the Golden Girls would say...'lanai'.

Here are some cattle that are just hanging out 'on the range'. I guess when they brand the cattle, they also put markings on the animal that indicate the lineage of the cattle (who sired them) as well as which pasture they belong to....to prevent too much inbreeding and to contain sickness if it were to break out.

This is a chart of a whole bunch of different registered brands and where they come from. There are thousands of registered brands in the world.

We got to meet an older gentleman nicknamed Lolo who has been a bona fide cowboy his whole life on the King Ranch and is 4th generation rancher - lived on the King Ranch his entire life and so have the people in his family for years and years. He said that he was allowed to start 'breaking' horses when he turned 10 years old! Agh! Anyway, Lolo was sooo interesting and explained about ranching, brands, the King Ranch and much more. He even has his nickname carved/engraved in his chaps!

And if you thought I was going to let this photo op go unnoticed, you don't know me very well! Here's me and Lolo!

Here's a longhorn who appears to not appreciate us looking at him.....our tour guide said that the only reason that they have longhorn cattle on the King Ranch is for historical purposes and notalgia. The actual cattle that are part of the ranching business are not longhorns.

Here's a baby longhorn!

I thought this picture was cool because you can see the 'running W' brand on the side of this longhorn - on the flank. This was also the same one that didn't appreciate me taking his picture. :) haha - joke's on you, pal!

And last, but not least, here's me making sure there's proof that I was actually there! It was a fabulous tour and soooo worth it. I had a blast!