Gettin' Our Kicks: Chapter 29 – Day 23 Fredericksburg to Austin

June 27, 2015

The weather radar and sky didn’t look too inviting this morning, so we decided to get an early start to Austin. It turned out this wasn’t necessary as the weather broke up and there was no rain at all. This was good, but it meant we missed out on some fine roads because we took a more direct route to Austin. Drat!

We did find a couple of  fabulous roads – no traffic with nice sweepers. There are plenty of  excellent roads in the Texas Hill Country, which we missed. Guess we’ll need to come back another time.

A short ways outside of Fredericksburg is the community of Luckenbach – famous for being the subject of the song "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)", sung by Waylon Jennings (written by Chips Moman and Bobby Emmons).

A bit about Luckenbach

Source: Wikipedia Luckenbach, Texas

Luckenbach’s oldest building is a combination General store and reputedly opened in 1849 (or maybe 1886). The community, first named Grape Creek, was later named after Carl Albert Luckenbach. Luckenbach's population increased to a high of 492 in 1904, but by the 1960s, it was almost a ghost town. A newspaper advertisement offering "town — pop. 3 — for sale" led Hondo Crouch, a rancher and Texas Folklorist, to buy Luckenbach for $30,000 in 1970, in partnership with Kathy Morgan and actor Guich Koock. Crouch used the town's rights as a municipality to govern the dance hall as he saw fit.

Today Luckenbach maintains a ghost-town feel with its small population and strong western aesthetic. One of its two main buildings houses the remnants of a post office, a working saloon, and a general store. The other is the dance hall. The post office was closed on April 30, 1971 and its zip code (78647) was retired. The general store remains active as a souvenir shop where visitors can purchase a variety of items, including merchandise featuring the town's motto "Everybody's Somebody in Luckenbach", include postcards, T-shirts, sarcastic and humorous signs, and the local newspaper, the 8-page monthly Luckenbach Moon.  

Today Luckenbach is mainly known for Country Music, hosting live music almost daily. We were too early for the day’s free live music, which was a darn shame. Rosie Flores, who sings alternative country music and has a beautiful voice, was going to play later in the afternoon for free. But alas we could not stay.

Post Office/General Store and Saloon. Please note the combo of ATM and Outhouse.

Judith taking a break in front of the Dance Hall

 

Dance Hall Saloon

We headed towards Austin on a couple of different two lane rural routes with 65 MPH speed limit. This was pretty easy to maintain!

We arrived at Jerry and Kate’s early and regrouped. Jerry is my oldest son and Kate is his fiancé. They both hold positions at the University of Texas in Austin, but are new to Texas, via Manhattan. Between them and prior to Austin, it was Columbia, Yale, Stanford and UCLA - somewhat different environments. I was anxiously awaiting to hear about their new cultural experiences.

They would be arriving from a conference in San Francisco later in the day, so we let ourselves in and proceeded to make a mess of their home.

It was good for us to catch up with them again. The last visit was in San Francisco over this past Christmas / New Years – just before their move to Austin.

So, next were dinner, Texas beer and Texas wine (we found some great Texas wine, which was a surprise for Judith and I) and a bunch of catching up. Good nights at about 1:30 - ugh!

Gettin' Our Kicks: Chapter 25 – Day 19 Tucumcari to Plainview, TX

June 23, 2015

Today was full of excitement…

We did manage to get a little earlier start today and the temperature was in the mid 70’s. This seemed like a Fall day compared to the previous week.

Here's some parting shots of the Blue Swallow...

Our room, #11, with the old pink double rocker

Our private garage

Billy, Wyatt and George

 The Old Mother Road led us out of Tucumcari for a few miles and then back on to I40.

After a while we were able to get back on to the Old Mother Road and parallel I40. But then…

End of the pavement on Old Route 66

The pavement stopped and the road turned to hard packed gravel. Now I knew if we stayed on this section for 5 or 6 miles it would bring us back into I40 right around the Texas border.

Judith was not so sure about continuing on and made a suggestion of turning around and going back several miles to I40. I managed to convince her that this would not be hard for her to ride and off we went – slow – but albeit off we went. After a couple of miles there is a dirt road that leads over to I40, so we did not need to do the full 5 or 6 miles. Judith did just fine and I was proud of her for persevering.

Really? You want to ride down this road?

Midpoint Café

We crossed the Texas border and shortly afterwards made a stop at the Midpoint Café. This is located at the exact midpoint of Route 66, and is a wonderful spot to stop. There are always lots of travelers of Route 66 making a stop at the Café. We had an early lunch.

Cadillac Ranch

Next on down the road was the Cadillac Ranch. If you have not heard about this place you probably won’t believe what I am about to tell you.

A number of years ago a guy decided to make an art piece out of ten old mid 60’s Cadillac’s. So he buried them nose down, at a 45 degree angle and in a straight line. His first location ran into some sort of trouble, so he dug them up and moved them to another location and they have been there for years. The location is on a frontage road that parallels I40, just to the West of Amarillo. Access is wide open to the public. Just park on the side of the road, walk through a gate and hike about 150 yards out to the Stonehenge of Texas.

It gets even more bizarre. The tradition is to take a can, or 3 or 4, of spray paint with you and spray whatever you like on the Caddies. The paint is – I kid you not – at least one inch thick or more on these icons.

What the heck??

All in a nice straight line - nosed in at 45 degrees

We found one with Digger painted on it. The wind was really blowing this day, as noted by Judith's hair.

Layers and layers and layers of paint cover the cars

This is a chunk of paint that had cracked and fallen off a car. Note the many, many layers of paint.

Another chunk of broken off paint. This is about 2-1/2 inches thick

Another tradition, I guess, is to leave your empty spray can behind. There were hundreds of them laying around.

From the Cadillac Ranch we turned south and headed to Plainview, TX for the night. This was pretty uneventful, with the only change being instead of fighting the strong cross winds we now got to ride into the strong head wind.

Dinner was a take out salad form a local grocery store and a bottle of wine in plastic cups. No proper wine glasses here in Plainview.