Brucato's Road Trip 2024

Sunday, September 22, 2024 Up this morning around 4:30 am -- that's the kind of thing that just happens when one goes to bed at 8:30 pm!  But actually, we both got up around the same time, so it worked out all right!  Plenty of sleep, and we were ready to say good bye to Anna, our amazing hostess, about 7:30 this morning! The first part of our drive was actually all on highways, which were practically deserted; it was wonderful! Lovely rolling hills.  We finally merged onto the freeway just west of Fort Stockton, but even there, the traffic wasn't bad at all, for which we were very thankful, although it was very flat!  We stopped at a Carl's, Jr . for lunch at Fort Stockton, and made it all the way to Van Horn about 2:30 pm. Town hall of little town near the freeway Leaving the hill country! Landscape getting flatter Davis Mountains in the distance We had stayed at El Capital Hotel several years ago, on our drive back from our Belize cruise with Bob and Stew one Dec...

Sunday, September 22, 2024   Good Morning!   Wow, we certainly had an amazing day yesterday, and we can’t thank Anna enough!  She had arranged for us to have a PRIVATE photography tour of  Natural Bridge Cavern , which is about an hour and 20 minutes away from Horseshoe Bay.  We left about 9 am for our 11:20 am tour, as this was a new place for all three of us, and we definitely didn’t want to be late.  Absolutely lovely drive over very good roads – Texas roads – when you’re not on freeways – are overall excellent (at least the ones in this area) and have lots of passing lanes, which makes them very safe and convenient.     We went through some really lovely small towns – Blanco, in particular, was at its Saturday morning best! Beautiful “historic” courthouse building in the center of town, old-fashioned main street, farmer’s market, and lots of things going on.  It was a really beautiful morning!  At o...

Saturday, September 21, 2024 I have been told that I am not supposed to shirk, but honestly, it has such a long and incredibly FULL day, that I am going to bed without blogging -- promising that I will cover today tomorrow ... once we get to Van Horn, Texas!  So -- we are fine, incredibly well fed on Texas BBQ, which was absolutely delicious, and now, this very tired blogger is heading directly to bed! So ... goodnight all! More tomorrow, I promise! m xxx

Friday, September 20, 2024   Hello!   Up this morning about 5 am and down to breakfast at 6 am; out the door and ready to head to Horseshoe Bay, Texas by 6:30 am – but suddenly, there was a problem!  The valet couldn’t deliver our car to us – because they didn’t have a valet in the morning who could drive a standard transmission!  So, would we mind walking to the parking lot ourselves possibly?  Had to laugh, as I had inquired when we pulled in “Do you know how to drive a standard transmission?” and was assured that they did … turns out, the valet service tries to always have someone who “knows how” on in the afternoon … but not in the morning!  Oh well!    The drive to Horseshoe Bay ordinarily takes one through Dallas and Fort Worth – and about 6 hours, but we opted to avoid both Dallas and Forth Worth and go surface streets – much more enjoyable, although it did take us 7 hours.   Crossing the Red River into Texas! ...