For weeks we've been thinking of and talking about getting away for a few days. Our spring and summer have been hectic and somewhat stressful, so we felt the need for some relaxing time away. Our plans were to leave home fairly early on Monday, September 25. It’s a 2 ½ hour drive from Temple to our planned get-away, in Fredericksburg, Texas. Dan came down with a cold a couple days before we were to leave, but he insisted he could still go. Then on Sunday evening we had a thunderstorm, and it knocked out our power for about 10 hours. It was back on by Monday morning, but Dan was pretty busy making sure everything was back up and running, plus … his cold seemed worse. He insisted we should go, despite my reservations. So we headed out, but we were running later than we had planned. We stopped in Llano to top off the charge on our car, and pulled into Fredericksburg about 3:00 p.m. We found our little Airbnb house – a “villa” as it was advertised – and had no problem unlocking with the code they had given us. It was a sweet little place, and we knew we’d be quite comfy there.
Almost every time we looked outside our window, we saw deer grazing in the wild grass or among the trees.
Our villa was just a block and a half off of the main street, but took an uphill walk to get there. We walked to Main Street for dinner, and it was kind of a strenuous little hike. That wasn’t good for Dan, who was already a bit sickly. We had dinner, came back to get the car, and drove to a grocery store to stock up on a few breakfast and snack items.
On Tuesday I encouraged Dan to take a completely restful, relaxing day, which he did. He napped on the couch. He napped in a chair. He napped in the bed. The whole day was a down-day. It was a pleasant place to do that. I sat outside quite a bit that day, watching deer and squirrels, and reading.
By that evening, Dan was a bit more chipper, and since the sky was clear, we attempted a photo shoot. Our “neighbors” in the yellow villa (they were a really sweet newlywed couple) wanted to watch, so joined us for part of the imaging. We did the Crescent nebula, mainly because there were a lot of trees, and it was one of the few targets that we could capture between the trees. I didn't feel it was one of our better shots, but it was fun to image from somewhere new.
Wednesday we did a little more adventuring. We went to the Nimitz gallery, which is part of the larger War in the Pacific Museum. We had already visited the bigger museum on another visit (read about it here), but hadn’t gone through the Nimitz part. We also went to the small Japanese garden that, according to a plaque mounted there was “gifted to the people of the US from the people of Japan with prayers for everlasting world peace through the goodwill of our two nations, symbolized by the friendship and respect that existed between admiral Togo and Admiral Nimitz.” It was a lovely place to pause and meditate for a few minutes.
Later that evening we went to a beautiful park in the center of town. One of the things that I loved, there, was what they called the Story Tree, which depicts the history of this little German town.
The sculpture in the photo above is in the park and is titled "Lasting
Friendship." It commemorates the peace treaty between local settlers and
the Comanche. Depicted are Chief Santanna and John Meusebach, sharing
the peace pipe.
On Thursday we headed home. We had a few
problems on the road (nothing serious), which slowed us down, but we
made it home at last, and were happy to be back in our own “villa.”
By
the following Monday, I came down with the same cold/flu bug that Dan
had, and spent the week recuperating. Finally, by Sunday, I was feeling
almost normal!
