Texas Hill Country Pics

Here are the pics from yesterday:

Sunrise in Kerrville, TX

Several shots along the banks of the Guadalupe River, showing the interesting fencing pattern, how shallow the river is, along with the flood gauge.

River shots with the sheer rock cliffs above; at Mo Ranch.

 Looking up the river from the footbridge toward the swimming dock

 Looking down from footbridge into the clear river at the underwater grasses

 Different shades of green in the river

View as we approach the labyrinth

 Looking into the center of the labyrinth; these large rocks were placed in the petals in the center--great for sitting and reflecting

Sitting in the center; loved the bright green on the trees

River Dorm, shot from the labyrinth side--wouldn't this be a great place to stay for a retreat?

Forgot to mention this in the body of the post, but this is just wild!  Happened to notice this as we were driving back to Fredericksburg--almost missed it.  It's on the site of the arts center, several miles outside of town, where there is a theater, and then this open space with a replica of both the stone carved statues from Easter Island and a non exact replica of Stonehenge.  This property was apparently previously owned by a man who had visited both Stonehenge and Easter Island and was so impressed by both places that he decided to build tributes to them on his land as a reminder.  He didn't try to make an exact replica, e.g., his Stonehenge is not oriented to the sun as is the original, and, as you can see, it's not an exact replication of the state of decay of some of the original.  He had an architect friend who helped him--they sunk steel rebars into concrete footings, wrapped wire mesh around the rebar and then applied a relatively thin cement coating around the mesh to create the illusion of solid stone.  Just another random fascinating sight along our way!

 This is the storyboard describing this project--you'll have to enlarge it some, and hopefully it will still be legible.

 Inside the circle.  We met two biker couples who had ridden down from Austin for the day and we took pictures for them and then they took ours.  One of the guys was hilarious--he went off on this rant about how he was an "alien believer" and how this was obviously done by space aliens--think he may have had one too many peyote beans, man!

 Some of the wild flowers around the Stonehenge

 Above:  lovely little garden in downtown Fredericksburg

 Inside the Vereins Kirche: Above:  the one trunk allowed to German immigrants to take all they could from their homeland when they came to settle in the hill country
Below:  picture of the original church