Exploring Hill Country towns......

We have driven hundreds of miles every week, finding quaint towns with little cafes and interesting antique and resale shops. Some of the towns were tiny, with less than 300 people living there, and some were too big for our liking, like Round Rock, population 86,175.

We have been to Smithville, LaGrange, Burton, Somerville, Independence, Bastrop, Caldwell, Cameron, and a bunch of others during the past few weeks... I can't remember the names of them all just now.

Today, we went to Rockdale (population 5439) in search of "The Antique Queens," a wonderful antique co-op that we walked around for nearly an hour. Found some nice hand-embroidered pillowcases there, as well as a old milk bottle for just $5.00. (I have been searching for an old glass milk bottle for weeks now.... finally found one with a reasonable price.)

We drove into Thorndale (pop. 1953)... half of the fields there were bright green, as if they had been rained on quite a lot, and the other half were dried and brown and aching for water.

In a town called Thrall, we saw acres and acres of cotton fields.... little white puffs of cotton blooming on bushes, as far as your eye could see. Amazing. How in the world do they get all that cotton off of the plants....... do people still pick it by hand, or do they have machines for that now? I didn't see a population sign in Thrall..... maybe it's too small a town to put up a sign.

In the town of Taylor (pop, 13,740), we had lunch at Louie Mueller's BBQ--- a dark old barn of a restaurant that was featured on the Food Channel show "Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives"-- we heard about the restaurant from one of the antique shop dealers.... and it seemed to be the only place in town for lunch. No air-conditioning in Louie Mueller's, and the temperature today was 105. No salads or veggies either at Louie's, so I had to make-do with sliced turkey and peach cobbler. The cobber was delicious, the turkey was fine once I cut off the pepper-rub that was smoked onto the skin of the turkey. The line was to the door when we walked into Louie Mueller's, and nearly out the door by the time we had finished our lunch. Popular place, even without air-conditioning.

In the town of Hutto (again, no pop. sign) we saw hippos on nearly all the lawns, and in front of nearly every shop in town. There was even a shop called "All Things Hippo," so I'm guessing that the hippo is the mascot of the town.

Round Rock..... the last place we went to..... and even though they had a very nice Antique Mall, the prices in that huge store were out-of-sight, for mostly everything we looked at. That town is too big for us now.... we're used to the small, quaint towns, not the noisy big shopping-mall towns. With apologies to all who live there, we could have done without Round Rock, and I doubt we'll go back there anytime soon.

There was a town a couple of weeks ago...... I think it was Smithville. They had a hair salon there whose sign out front read "Curl Up & Dye," which I thought was both creative and hysterical. That's why I like the smaller towns..... the people who live in those sleepy towns have time to think.

In one of the little towns a while back (maybe it was Bastrop), we had lunch at a little cafe called "Gracie's," which was too cute for words..... and just the fact that it was the same name as our dog, we had to try it. In one of the shops near Gracie's, I had seen a vintage embroidered sampler which said: "We make a living with what we get, but we make a life with what we give." I would have been happy to buy that sampler, but the price was as high as the moon.