On our way to Ohio to see the eclipse, Kathy & I stopped off in western Pennsylvania to visit our friends Jim & Lisa. While we were there we made a trip to McConnell’s Mill State Park to do a little hiking. The mill itself has fallen into disrepair, but the covered bridge has been nicely maintained and makes for a picturesque scene on Slippery Rock Creek.
I had been to this park years ago, but enjoyed the time outdoors and with friends. I even managed to make a few photographs.
After one day in Fredericksburg, Kathy & I decided we had seen enough cowboy art and turquoise jewelry, the wineries were busy and charged more for tastings than for a bottle of wine, so we stopped by the visitor center to see what else we might do. The woman there mentioned a driving tour of one room school houses in Gillespie County, the area surrounding Fredericksburg.
Better than I can tell it, here is a bit of history about the schools from The Friends of Gillespie County Country Schools:
As many as 44 rural schools were in operation around Fredericksburg, the county seat of Gillespie County, in the early 20th century. German immigrants had poured into the area that became known as the Texas Hill Country in the mid to late 1800’s, starting with the settlement of New Braunfels in 1845 and Fredericksburg in 1846. As families moved onto land more distant from town, the earliest rural educational efforts normally involved hiring a teacher to educate the children in private
homes.
Eventually land was donated by a family in the area and a community school was built taking names descriptive of nearby natural landmarks such as Cave Creek, Crabapple, Pecan Creek or Lower South Grape Creek. The German heritage of Gillespie County is evident in other names like Luckenbach, Meusebach, Rheingold and Nebgen.
The Gilmer-Aikin Law of 1949 resulted in the consolidation of most rural schools in Texas, bringing a close to this era of public education. Remarkably, the main buildings at only two of the 44 rural schools in Gillespie County were demolished over the decades. In the 1950’s, community clubs were organized and maintained some of the rural school properties in Gillespie County using their own funds, even though they were owned by the Fredericksburg Independent School District (FISD).
Short histories of the schools can be obtained at the Visitor Information Center in Fredericksburg, located at 302 East Austin Street, at each school and on our website: www.historicschools.org
The tour resulted in a very nice day, and quite a collection of interesting, albeit very documentary, photographs. It’s ultimately the way we prefer to spend our time, rather than trudging up and down the main street in a town, wandering through shops with no intention or interest in buying. When there is a bakery or ice cream shop, however…. 😉
We’re off to Ohio in a few days in hopes of catching the eclipse. I do plan to take some pictures, but not of the eclipse. I just want to watch it myself and let those with the patience and proper equipment make photos I can see later. I do hope to get lots of pictures of people wearing those awesome glasses, though! 🙂
After our stop in Shiner we arrived in Fredericksburg, where we stayed for a few days before heading east toward Florida. The draw for Fredericksburg is that it is in the heart of Texas wine country. We drove through Fredericksburg on a previous trip but only spent one night. Ironically, despite being in the middle of wine country we didn’t visit any wineries! We did manage to drink a bit of Texas wine, did a little shopping and some sightseeing.
I was really taken with the public library. Housed in the former Gillespie County Courthouse that was built in 1881-1882 and used until 1939, the building was subsequently converted to the current use as the library. The limestone exterior, high ceilings and wooden trim are a reminder of the days of fine craftsmanship. The library even has a card catalog, although the drawers are empty now.
The town of Fredericksburg is like a lot of small towns these days, just with a Texas twist. Instead of antiques and country crafts there is cowboy art and turquoise jewelry. Lots of interesting restaurants, though. We had several really nice meals during our stay.
We stayed in a really cool hotel located at the Gillespie County Airport. Named the Hangar Hotel, it is styled after a WWI aircraft hanger, complete with an Officer’s Club, the name of the lounge. It was fun watching all the planes coming and going, and made for some interesting photography.
On our journey across Texas we made a quick stop in Shiner, Texas to visit the K. Spoetzl Brewery, home of Shiner Beer. We had some gen-u-ine Texas brisket, toured the brewery and had some Shiner Beer before heading off into wine country.
The Spoetzl Brewery started in 1909. It was originally named The Shiner Brewing Association (SBA) and was founded by German and Czech immigrants who had settled around the central Texas town of Shiner. Unable to find the type of beer they had known in their home countries, they decided to brew their own. It is the oldest independent brewery in Texas and one of the oldest independent breweries in the U.S.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the brewery’s Shiner Premium Beer and Shiner Bock accounted for less than 1% of the Texas beer market. In 1983, Spoetzl produced 60,000 US beer barrels of beer; in 1990, only 36,000 US beer barrels. Sales improved after Carlos Alvarez of San Antonio acquired the brewery in 1989. Production grew to 100,000 US beer barrels in 1994, and over the next 10 years production nearly tripled. The company now has 120 employees and as of 2012 it was the fourth-largest craft brewery in the United States.
It was a good visit, and some of the Amber Bock even made it home for us to share with our friends, neighbors and family! 😉
We spent two nights in Galveston before our cruise, and took advantage of the proximity to visit Space Center Houston. Known famously for “Houston We Have A Problem” it is the home of Mission Control, specifically the The Christopher C. Kraft Mission Control Center, from which NASA led Gemini and Apollo missions, including the momentous first lunar landing mission as well as early space shuttle missions.
As a space geek from childhood, having the opportunity to visit Mission Control was a bit of a thrill. NASA has completely restored the center to look like it did during the moon landings. They sourced manuals, binders, furniture and even ashtrays from former workers and have turned it into a bit of a museum. The tour took us into what had been the VIP viewing gallery, where we could look through the windows while re-enactments of various scenes from Apollo 11 played out on the screen, including the tense moments of landing at Tranquility Base.
Another highlight of the center is Space Shuttle Independence, which is on display on the back of one of the converted Boeing 747 aircraft which were used to transport the shuttles from California back to Florida between missions. Both craft were open to walk through, with plenty of information displays. The size of the combined vehicles is quite impressive!
The overall museum is very well done, with actual Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules, a space rock you can actually touch, information on the upcoming Artemis missions and lots of other space memorabilia. It was a great visit. Having been to space centers at Cape Canaveral, Huntsville and now Houston, NASA have done a commendable job preserving these bits of history.
Actually a destination in itself, we spent only a few hours at Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi. It was an appropriately gloomy day for visiting a former battlefield, I thought. These are just a few representative photos from this memorial to what was one of the most important and decisive battles of the Civil War.
The sheer number of casualties from Vicksburg alone is overwhelming, and was just a portion of the overall losses from the war. War didn’t make any more sense then than it does today, and unfortunately it doesn’t seem like we’ve taken the lessons to heart.
There are hundreds of monuments across the battlefield, and the largest and most impressive were those from individual states. For a history buff a lot of the battle lines were marked, with information on the troops stationed there at various points of the battle. A little too detailed for me, but interesting to try and understand the scope of the place.
I was especially interested in the USS Cairo on display. The ship was salvaged from the Mississippi River years after the war. It has been partially restored and rests on a cradle under this large canopy. The mechanical components of the ship are pretty much intact.
We made an overnight stop in Columbus, GA, a former mill town on the Chattahoochee River along the border with Alabama. The Eagle & Phenix Mills Buildings have been converted into apartments and condominiums, and much of the downtown area has become a dining and entertainment area.
We spent only a brief amount of time in Columbus, but on the morning of our departure I managed to do a little photography on the way to and from breakfast.
On our recent trip to Texas, we made a stop at Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park near Macon, Georgia. We had intended to visit several years ago, but this was one of the many parks whose visitor centers had been closed during the Covid hysteria. We got to visit this time.
The park is a prehistoric American Indian site, boasting more than 12,000 years of continuous human habitation by many different American Indian cultures. American Indians first came here during the Paleo-Indian Period hunting Ice Age mammals. Around 900 CE, the Mississippian Period began, and people constructed mounds for their elite, which remain here today.
The site was also the scene of several Civil War battles.
The largest dig ever conducted in this country occurred here at Ocmulgee and the surrounding area. Between 1933 and 1936, over 800 men in Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), Civil Works Administration (CWA), Federal Emergency Relief Administration (ERA & FERA), and later by the Civilian Conservation Corps excavated under the direction of Dr. Arthur R. Kelly from the Smithsonian Institute.
The site was declared a National Monument in 1936. In 1937 the National Park Service, along with U.S. Congressman Carl Vinson, General Walter Harris, and Dr. Charles C. Harrold, completed a list of needed development projects including construction of a museum, restoration of archeological features, access roads and parking, tree planting, and fence construction – all to include the detached Lamar Site, where a levee was also needed.
Houston, We had no problem. 😉
Kathy & I visited the Space Center Houston Complex, including a tour of the Christopher C. Kraft Mission Control Center, which was the Mission Control made famous with the saying, but also for the center used in all of the Apollo missions and many Shuttle missions. The center has been completely restored, down to the butts in the ashtrays on the consoles. The idea was to make the center look like the workers just got up and went home for the day.
The presentation included snippets from the Apollo 11 mission which landed on the moon. For a long-time space buff it was truly a memorable visit!
This photo also looks pretty good (possibly better) in B&W:
Kathy & I are enroute to Texas for the first leg of our winter travels. We made a long overdue stop in Vicksburg to visit the National Military Park there. It is a solemn reminder of the price many have paid over our nation’s history.
We visited on a cloudy and overcast day, but thankfully with no rain. The whole time I photographed there I was envisioning the photos in black & white, in an inadequate homage to the photographs that were made in the heat of the moment. The battlefields as they exist today are a distant reminder of the horrors of battle, but the tribute paid in the form of monuments and memorials is moving.