Monday, March 11, 2013

OFF THE BEATEN PATH

Friday, March 13 – Having seen most of the touristy stops around Fredericksburg several years ago  (Enchanted Rock, LBJ Museum & Ranch, Museum of the Pacific War, OPA's Smoked Meats, etc.), we visited a few smaller sights today.

We walked around a roadside pottery an metal shop looking at some of the crazy metal art. They did have some beautiful pottery, but we have all we can carry packed in the RV.

The Wildseed Farm is a pretty neat stopping experience.

Wildseed farm

It is a family-owned farm since 1983. John R. Thomas, Wildseed's founder and president, turned his sideline turf seeding business into a full-time wildflower farm. In addition, he developed a machine to plant the tiny seeds and another to harvest them. The new company pioneered the practice of planting wildflowers in rows on large acreage. The farm has more than 1,000 cultivated acres in Texas and over 200 acres of wildflower fields at its Hill Country. They plant, harvest and sell seed of over 100 species of wildflowers, herbs and garden variety flowers.

They have hundreds of metal sculptures. The cacti below are all metal.DSC03737

They have two very nice gift shop that Marsha enjoyed strolling around.

gift shop

Make this one of your stops when visiting Hill Country.

We then stopped at das Peach Haus.

das Peach haus

We were a little disappointed with this stop. Founded in 1969 on the grounds of the Wieser family orchards, the tourist literature describes it as having developed into a premier country store. We aren't too sure of that! Pretty small and not much to see. This is the only place we did find free wine tasting though.

signs in store

More about our day in tomorrow's blog.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y'all back real soon. Have a great day!