My parents were in town for a visit over the weekend, and for a little day trip we headed out to the
Lyndon B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site between Johnson City and Fredericksburg, before finishing our afternoon at
Pedernales Falls State Park. I don't have all my pictures up yet, but I do have some shots of my favorite surprise of the trip: the Sauer-Beckmann Farmstead.
The Farmstead (which is part of the LBJ State Park) is a "living farm" where interpreters in period clothing plant, cook, clean, and live like it is still 1918. This was particularly effective on our visit, since it was a cool Monday morning and there was only one other tourist in the park. All the farm buildings and the farmhouse are open and filled with turn-of-the century equipment and furnishings. There are no velvet ropes or interpretive signs, which made it really seem like we were intruding on these old timey people as they fried up their sausage in the kitchen (we came around lunchtime), hoed the sweet potatoes in the garden, and scrubbed the floor with homemade lye soap (pictured above). The docents pitched their story just right, and didn't come off too practiced or hokey. The best part of it is that most of the time they just left you alone to explore the farm, take pictures, and watch the chickens, sheep, turkeys, and cows that wandered around loose.
Since I was really only mildly interested in
the "Texas Whitehouse" and LBJ's ranch (although they were also pretty neat), this was a lovely surprise. Everyone should go! But try to do it when no one else is around so that you can have your run of the living farm...
[Note: Best thing of all -- the LBJ State Park and Historic Site are 100% free, now that they are letting cars drive through on a self-guided tour of the ranch instead of making you pay to take a tour bus. Although you do have to pay $1 for a guided tour of LBJ's office, the only room in the "Texas Whitehouse" that has been opened since Ladybird's death.]
[Growing set of pictures from the weekend, including the living farm,
here.]
Even though the falls didn't have that much water in them, I declare Pedernales Falls State Park to be lovely! I'd like to go back and do some of the hiking trails -- we spent all our time crawling over rocks, sliding through sand, and looking at beautiful blue water.
The lovely Julia lent me a copy of José Saramago's 1997 novel Blindness, and I would go so far as to say it is one of the best novels I've read in a long time.
Yay! Achewood Volume IX: Soured on Beer and Given to Claims has made it to my door! Any true Achewood fan should not be without this fine collection of selected strips that originally ran from September 2006 through May 2007, including one of my favorite story arcs -- Mister Band (which you can read online starting here). Yay for Achewood! But when will they announce the Austin date for the book tour?
The always lovely choo lent me Jeffrey Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything (1997) quite awhile ago and it somehow got buried in my pile even though I love food, I love reading, and I love reading about food.
Ah, Flickr, I never know what weird connections you will bring about. I already know that if I tag one of my photos with "boob" or "feet" or "pee" it will suddenly become very popular. I had no idea that there is a whole group out there who are totally turned on by women wearing bandanas. That last link isn't really safe for work, although it isn't particularly graphic or anything. If you don't mind people seeing you look at a mixture of pornish-looking pictures of women tied up with bandanas together with obviously personal shots of people just wearing bandanas, then go for it. I've got no problem with someone like Flickr user sexybutt99 (if that is his real name) liking to look at some bondage photos, but seriously dude, me wearing a bandana while I am out hiking is not an invitation for you to favorite my picture and try to add it to your group pool. Ew.
Way back before I went on vacation last week, I seem to recall reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1914 book At the Earth's Core. This is the first book in Burroughs' Hollow Earth series, the second of which I uncharacteristically read first. Obviously that didn't trip me up much since I give a pretty solid run down of the plot of this book in my review of the second book. The only thing I can really add after actually reading the first book in the series is that adorable tiny little whales live in some of the ponds on Pellucidar, but that doesn't stop our hero from catching them and eating them raw when he is on the run from the freaky lizard rulers of the inner-earth kingdom.
Big Bend was beautiful -- I'm so glad I decided to overcome my fear of peeing outside and my general dislike of bugs and sleeping on the ground to go camping for a few days. Of course no pictures ever do any big awesome nature experience justice, but I tried. There were lots of landscapes, plants, pictures of me that I took myself, hiking, camping, spiders (okay not lots of spiders, but definitely one big one), and friends.
