Sunday in Texas

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After our breakfast of bagels, sausage, and hard boiled eggs, we drove 1.5 hours to attend a nondenominational church in Waco – en route, and a very very good message focused on communion, which evidently is not celebrated weekly.

And en route we also learned so much interesting info about Czechoslovakian immigration. (We kept seeing signs for kolaches, and Czech names for bakeries.) Evidently TX has more Czechs than another other state. They first came in the 1850s to lead churches to immigrant German Protestants. Their influence was so great on Mexican music it’s called “norteno” and our son-in-law knew all about it. Mariachi polkas?!

After church we changed into cooler clothes, had our lunch of leftover brisket and our bagel borrowed from breakfast, and by the time we arrived at Balcones National Wildlife preserve it was a hot and completely cloudless day. Also birdless unfortunately. They don’t like the heat of midday, even tho it was after 3:30 by then. We spied only one black and white warbler.

So we had a nice but uneventful hike of 1.25 miles or so, and could see why this is called "hill country" after the topography finally changed from flat - and drove the 45 minutes on to our hotel in N. Austin to check in, snuck out just a few blocks away for a Poke bowl dinner and managed to have our usual Sunday night conversation with the family. Hope springs eternal and we hope to get an early start tomorrow.

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