If you live in the Central Texas area or are visiting here soon, here's a detailed account of the trip we took today - starting at 8:30 am.... We LOVE to drive through small Texas towns and look for bridges, old old vacated buildings, nice eateries, courthouses, town squares and anything else weird, interesting, or just plain cool! We use websites like Texas Escapes, Texas Handbook Online, and we just type in the towns' names, print out the history and also some of the sites to see.
From Austin we drove first to Oakhalla, TX (not far from Lampasas) - and just drove on through to Kempner. (Hwy 190 and RR 2313). Then to Rumley, and on to Topsey, Pidcoke, and Purmela onto Ireland (one of my faves for old buildings!) and Aleman. (We drove by the Pidcoke Cemetery and past it, to see a beautiful creek and valley nearby - Bee House Creek).
Here are a few pics of the old buildings we saw, plus the safari ranch we drove through in Topsey.
Cute church with a bell!
See the faint painting of balloons and there's sign that says coffee on the 1st weekend.
The Topsey Exotic Safari was $11 pp (adults)
We then stopped in a bit larger town, Hamilton, to eat lunch around 1pm at Central Perk - super delicious sandwiches, wraps and soups in an old house with a nice patio. After we ate, we planned to walk the square (around the pretty courthouse) but we met a blind man and ended up helping him get groceries and get home!
Next, we drove to Pottsville and Indian Gap (my favorite picture below of an old schoolhouse - see the Indian face under the center window?) We read that Indian Gap got its name from the gap between two small mountains there - and we saw it!
We drove on to Priddy, Center City (an old oak tree there is supposedly the very center of the state of Texas - we found it but it looked very dead!) and then Star. Below is the Star Historical Museum, and it's believed the town was named for a mountain nearby that has five points that make it a star shape!
We then drove on back, planning to go to Copperas Cove for a movie there (Cinergy Cinema) (they have a very cool theater), but we opted to meet our kids for dinner instead :)
This was a super fun road trip. We always pack trail mix ( several kinds of nuts, pepitas, dark chocolate pieces and dried cranberries and cheerios!), a bag of magazines or books to read if we stop in a park to take a break, and water bottles for drinking!)
It's a great way to spend a Saturday on the back roads away from major highways looking at the past and reading the folklore surrounding these towns that used to be...or still are.
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