A few weekends ago Marci and I took some vacation days and spent part of our extended weekend on a "staycation" to the nearby city of Wimberly, Tx.
Wimberly, who's tagline is "a nice place to visit.....a great place to live", is a small city a mere hour's drive from our home in Austin. We'd both heard great things about Wimberly and were excited to go visit.
Day 1: We saw some nature and ate some stuff.
The first place we visited was Jacob's Well Natural Area, which happened to be just a few minutes off the road on the way to Wimberly. Jacob's Well is one of the largest underwater caves in Texas as well as a popular swimming hole. Being Fall, we were mostly there to catch a peak of the well. However, we happened to have visited a few days after one of the biggest rain storms in Texas history! As this was the case we didn't really see much of the well at all. Below you can see what we saw, but I encourage you to check out some of these pictures of what we were planning on seeing.
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| Jacob's Well, fully of muddy water from rain runoff. |
However, while hiking around the area, we did see quite a few butterflies!
After that we headed into Wimberly to catch some lunch at a restaurant we had read about called The Leaning Pear. The food was delicious, and I found the architecture of the restaurant to be awesome! I wish I had taken my camera inside! You'll have to rely on the pictures on their website to get an idea of what I'm talking about.
From there we headed to the Wimberly Glass Works to watch live demonstrations of glass blowing and check out their amazing artwork. The demonstration was fun to watch and very informative.
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| All blown glass starts as a small bubble on the end of the tube. |
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| They then add layers of glass between inflating the bubble. |
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| Eventually they add broken colored glass and melt it onto the bubble. |
Most of the items they had for sale were a bit out of our price range, but we did get a Christmas ornament, which made for some interesting macro pictures.
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| Eventually you get this. |
On the way to our next planned destination, we made an impromptu stop at a the Jade Gardens Central Texas Bonsai Tree Exhibit. It didn't take long for me to realize that I had totally misunderstood what a bonsai tree was and the owner was very happy to inform me at length the error of my ways. Bonsai, is not a type of tree. Bonsai, which more or less means "Tree in a pot", is an art form. Any tree can be a Bonsai tree with the proper care and grooming. Feeling less ignorant, we headed to the next point of interest on our itinerary.
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| "I'm a little tree (in a pot) short and shout...." |
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| Flower on one of the Bonsai trees. |
Next up was a short hike to the top of "Prayer Mountain" / "Mt. Baldy", one of two predominate hills in the valley near the city of Wimberly. Once we climbed the 200+ stairs and caught our breath, we had a pretty decent panoramic view of the area. I had brought my tripod with me to the top so that I could do a fancy 360 panoramic composed of 16 or so pictures, but the scrubby trees surrounding the bald top obstructed what would have made for an excellent picture.
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| This is taken from the top looking down the stairs. |
We got to the park well after dark but had just enough time to setup camp, make smores over a campfire, and take some nighttime pictures before going to bed.
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| Our tent, lit up by Marci inside with a flashlight. |
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| The Stars at Night, are big and bright... (you know the rest) |
Day 2: A donkey tried to eat my shoe and I think there were crafts.
The next day we packed up camp and headed to the Old Oaks Ranch and Fiber Arts Studio. Although they were in the process of selling their business, raising alpaca's for their fur, the Old Oaks Ranch was still providing tours of it's facilities. By facilities, I mean they let you go look at their remaining Alpacas.
Alpacas are odd creatures, they don't like being touched and will spit stomach acid at you if they feel threatened. However, their fur is apparently great for making various fibers and their meat is tasty enough that there is apparently a problem with illegal alpaca smuggling to North America. Who knew?
Anyways, I stayed my distance from them as best I could. In doing so, a donkey they had on the ranch decided to be my friend and follow me around. At one point in time Margarita, the donkey, was investigating my shoe and gnawed at it a bit. As it turns out, trying to stay away from the Alpacas made them more curious about me than all the other people trying to get a closer look. This resulted in some hilarious pictures.
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| Marci with the Lady Alpacas |
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| Llama is not impressed |
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| A male Alpaca being a typical dude. |
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| Hey, whatcha doing? |
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| Shy Alpaca |
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| I was pretty sure I was about to get spit on when taking this picture. |
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| These were the only fibers left at the store that came from their Alpacas. |
Having been sufficiently acquainted with the alpacas, we headed back into Wimberly to check out the famous Wimberly Market Days. With over 475 outdoor booths of all kinds of arts/crafts/clothes/food/etc, the rest of our day was pretty much set. To get an idea of the magnitude of this place, check out this map in conjunction with my picture below, which was taken between booths 373 and 361 at the corner of Cardinal and Purple Martin (bottom right of the map).
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| If only they had one in my size.... |
Summary:
Looking back, our short trip was action packed but managed to be very relaxing. We will certainly have to plan more of these short weekend adventures.
