We felt that a leisurely morning was in order so it was 9:00 before we were untethering the mother ship’s umbilicals from water and electricity. I was heading out on my bike to the registration area to pay for our night’s stay when I noticed that my rear tire was flat. Why is it never the front tire, the easy one to change, that goes flat? I walked up to pay our bill and then came back to tackle the tube change. With some good investigative work on Ike’s part we found that the problem was a thorn that had penetrated through the tire into the tube. It seems in Texas even little thorns have big ambitions.

So by the time we had everything sorted, stopped along the way to take a few pictures etc. it was almost noon by the time we rolled into Fredericksburg. Fredericksburg is an interesting town of about 10,000 people that was originally a German settlement. It still maintains a lot of that heritage as demonstrated by its Bavarian styled houses and Germanic street names but there is no doubt that this is still a Texan town, albeit one with a curious cultural mash up. Imagine someone wearing lederhosen with cowboy boots and a ten gallon hat and you will have some sense of the cultural dichotomy that is Fredericksburg.

Right next door to the cowboy hat and boot store is the decorative German candle store. In my mind some of the ugliest creations in wax since the great fire at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. Four lanes of traffic form the Main Street and inhibit crossing from shops on opposite sides of the thoroughfare except at intersections. In one shop specializing in leather goods there were lovely hand tooled Bible covers right next to the lovely hand tooled hand gun cases, nothing like covering your odds.

We spent a couple of hours walking around and Ike took advantage of the time to get an oil change. A late lunch at a brew pub followed by a coffee stop gave us chance to catch up on e-mails and update the blog. It also provided us with an opportunity to mark the progress of Family # 2 who are burning a swath across ‘merica in the MRT in anticipation of our scheduled May 1 rendezvous at the Grand Canyon.

As it was now getting late we decided that we would head for the closest state park we cold find and settled on the South Llano River State Park. The drive into the park was scenic but there were ominous reminders that we were in flash flood country, witnessed by flood water level gauges marked in one foot increments to 5 feet above pavement level. I’m pretty sure that even the bulk of the BRT would lift off in those conditions. Fortunately there has been a dry spell here for a while, a church in Fredericksburg prompted its parishioners to ‘pray for rain’. After seeing the markers I hoped that their prayers, if answered that night, would be answered as one and not cumulatively.

On arrival at the park we were advised by the park host that the park was a favourite site for bird watchers and that there were bird blinds scattered throughout the park and that the birds were attracted by regular feelings each morning so we looked forward to seeing even more unique bird life. As we spoke a beautiful red Cardinal landed behind him.

We also noted that deer roam freely throughout the park and although cautious have clearly become habituated to humans. As we had a late lunch, supper was a light meal of pasta and tomato sauce that Jane prepared. The warm breezes of Ink Lake had been replaced by a cold wind so supper was inside, preceded by a planning session. We now have to be very careful with our time as our rendezvous with family # 2 at the Grand Canyon on May 1 is rapidly approaching.