March 21 - 23, Kerrville, TX, San Antonio dinner/bar and Lost Maples hike

By Chris Ransdell

Our first full day in Kerrville was Saturday.  I worked 4.5 hours and Brian did laundry and looked at job stuff in PA.  It was rainy but started to clear up in the afternoon.  First we went to a Western Museum which was ok. We drove out to Enchanted Rock which was 'open' but the trails were not so that was kind of a bust.


We decided to go to San Antonio for dinner and to check out the night life.  By the time we got ready to actually leave it was 7 pm so there was only an hour of daylight but it was enough to get through the curviest parts of TX-16 towards San Antonio.  We saw some deer on the way. They are small deer called "chital".  It was way after 8 when we arrived at Buffalo Wild Wings in outer San Antonio and we were hungry.  After dinner we made a brief visit to 'The Annex' which is a dive bar near downtown.  It was heavy on the dive aspect and not so much on having interesting (or even all that many) people for us.  I just like to get a bit of local flavor so it delivered that. We were home around midnight. 


I-10 on the way home was surprisingly not nutty even in town and most of the trip was 75 MPH speed limit and very light traffic.  I do appreciate the mobility that Texas and most of the non coast parts of the country enjoy.  Even the modest 2 lane roads in West TX were 75 MPH for the majority of the miles.  New Mexico definitely has more variable roads, some are pretty potholed, but still pretty fast and easy to get around.

Sunday was all about Lost Maples state natural area.  I hiked Lost Maples when I was here years ago and I hoped Brian would enjoy it also.  Brian drove and we both enjoyed seeing and crossing the Guadalupe many times on TX-39 East of Kerrville.  Since we have a stated goal of getting 100 miles of hiking in during our trip, we decided not to decide between the East trail, West trail and the West Loop trail and did them all!  A little over 9 miles and while none of the individual climbs was huge, there were a lot of them.  I'd guess 1500 vertical feet in total.









We had a recommendation for a place to eat in Fredericksburg but it and the Cowboy Steakhouse (and most of the other things I looked at) are closed on Sunday.  It's surprising that there are more placed that aren't open Sunday here than in Tennessee.  So we're eating near the hotel (Italian).  Tomorrow, off to San Antonio for 1 night at the Hyatt Place.  I've never been to a Hyatt Place so I'm kind of excited to see what it is like.

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