A Trip North

After we enjoyed Big Bend National Park, we made our way north to the Texas Hill Country. We planned to visit Chris’s cousin, also named Chris.

He was on vacation Christmas week, so we planned to spend a few days on Lake Ivie before heading in his direction. It was a five-hour trip, mostly on smaller country roads.

As usual, we enjoyed the scenery, leaving the mountains behind for the flatter oil fields. In the middle of the oil fields, we saw a large hill in the distance. As we drew closer, we realized instead of an ordinary hill, it was what we suspected to be a bunker of some sort. In one corner, we saw an inconspicuous door. We also noticed that the power lines stopped at the hill.

As we drove north, we started to see ranches. One ranch, south of Fort Stockton, caught our attention because of its magnitude. It went on for miles and miles. We took the interstate east at Fort Stockton for a short distance before returning to the country roads for the rest of the journey.

Lake Ivie

We were happy to see trees again as we neared Hill Country. Hill Country is a beautiful juxtaposition of trees and desert. We still saw a lot of cactuses, but they were now in amongst the tall trees. As we neared Lake Ivie, we stopped at a store. While Chris went inside, I enjoyed a lone chicken strutting around the parking lot. She wasn’t at all fazed by the cars or the people coming and going.

We pulled into Concho Park at Lake Ivie. We stopped at the marina to purchase our permit. The marina had a store with a diner, an RV park, a boat launch, picnic areas, and a free camping area. The lake was beautiful, and the birdlife was abundant. We picked a campsite tucked away in a corner with a lovely view of the lake.

As we drove around the park to get a lay of the land, we saw deer and an armadillo. It was the first wild armadillo I had seen. In the RV park, we spotted more deer. We noticed that one of the marina employees was putting food out for them. While I took pictures, he told us there were more around the corner. I couldn’t believe how many there were hanging out in between the RVs, feasting.

We woke up in the morning to the lovely sound of birds singing. The woods around us abounded with them. We could see waterbirds flying over the lake, cardinals frolicking in the trees nearby, and northern mockingbirds seemed to be everywhere, putting on a show for us. There was even a woodpecker in the tree next to our truck.

As we made breakfast, two deer slowly walked across the field below us, disappearing into the vegetation. Later, I saw another armadillo. I walked down to where he was to take some close-up pictures. As I got closer to him, he suddenly realized I was there.  The creature that I thought was a slow mover suddenly sprang to life, leaping into the vegetation at the edge of the field. I was delighted by the hilarious scene.

I took a walk to the lake, passing by a flock of killdeer feeding in the field. At the lake’s edge, I saw ducks and American coots swimming among the reeds. When I returned to camp, we sat in our chairs, enjoying coffee, taking in the glorious view before us.

When we drove through the RV park the previous evening, we noticed a bathhouse. We were desperate for a shower. When we asked, we found the bathhouse was only for the RV park campers. However, since the park was not busy, they allowed us to use the bathhouse for a nominal fee. We were ecstatic.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and enjoying the beautiful lake view. In the morning, the weather had changed. Our beautiful, warm, sunny day had turned into a chilly, foggy, overcast one. We packed up quickly, stopped at the diner for breakfast, and headed south to the ranch.

It was incredible to see the windmills, the tops hidden in the thick low-lying fog. At regular intervals, the blades popped out of the clouds, only to disappear again just as fast. Eventually, the fog lifted, and we were better able to see our surroundings.

In the past, when I pictured Texas ranches, my vision involved Texas longhorns. What I saw as we drove did not reflect what I thought.  We didn’t see any cows, but instead, we saw mostly goats and some sheep.

Pecan Springs Ranch

After a beautiful drive, we arrived at Pecan Springs Ranch. After we went through the gate, it was another two miles or so to Cousin Chris’s house. He wasn’t there but had told us to walk in and make ourselves at home. The house was everything I pictured in my head that a ranch house would be, with skins for throw rugs, stuffed trophies on the walls, and antlers adorning the front of the house.  Cousin Chris came home shortly after we arrived.

The ranch is an exotic hunting ranch. One of Cousin Chris’s jobs as ranch manager is to fill deer feeders weekly during hunting season. Usually, he does it mid-week, but with bad weather expected, he was filling them early. Chris joined him to finish the job.

When they returned, Chris told me to grab my camera. He didn’t tell me what we were going to see, but I expected it to be something spectacular. We pulled up behind the main house and there, in all his glory, was an elk with a huge rack, relaxing under a tree.

We next drove the ranch’s dirt roads until we came to a fence separating Pecan Springs Ranch from Vic’s Exotics next door. He had an unbelievable collection of exotic animals, rivaling any zoo I’ve ever seen.

It was enthralling to get such an up-close view of wildebeests, rheas, axis deer, llamas, zebras, and several species of antelopes, as well as other creatures I didn’t recognize. Driving back to the house, I was equally excited to see several longhorns that live on the ranch.

After arriving at the ranch, our first order of business was to find a place to address the brakes. We decided that we would replace everything with the age of our truck, pads, rotors, and calipers. With it being New Year’s week, we didn’t make much progress. Since there wasn’t anything else we could do about it until after the holiday, we were content to settle into ranch life for a little while.

Christmas Lights

The whole month of December, I had been looking for somewhere to see Christmas lights. We started making an event of it two years ago when we went to Christmas Town at Busch Gardens and then Lewis-Ginter Botanical Garden last year. It wasn’t looking promising this year. We wanted a drive-through display where we would not have exposure to crowds, and we were on a tight budget. Most of the light shows I found were exorbitantly priced and outside of our price range.

I had discovered a free light display in the nearby town of Fredericksburg, but with the brake situation, I had given up on going. When Cousin Chris invited us to join him for dinner in Fredericksburg, I was excited that we might be able to the lights after all. We drove right by the park where the lights were. We opted not to get out of the car but instead enjoyed the beauty of the twinkling lights as we drove by.

I have only been to Texas once before, driving through 30 years ago. At the time, I was surprised to find myself driving in the snow. Snow does not happen in Texas very often. New Year’s Eve arrived, bringing with it a snowstorm. It wasn’t bad, and the snow had melted off by noon the next day. We were surprised a little more than a week later when it snowed again. The ranch was gorgeous in the newly fallen snow.

I enjoyed the wildlife of the ranch. Sitting in the living room, at almost any given time, I could look out the window and see deer and blackbucks grazing right next to the house. One night, Cousin Chris came in and told me to step outside. An elk was standing out front, only 15 feet from the house. Unfortunately, it was too dark to capture her in a photo. Another night, Chris went out only to be barked at by the nearby elk.

Just before we arrived at the ranch, a ringtail had killed all of Cousin Chris’s chickens. After a lot of effort, he was able to find a hen and two roosters. A few days later, he was able to trade the two roosters for four more hens. After a week in the coop, he let them roam freely. The first night, one of the hens did not come back. We were concerned that something had happened to her. It was a relief to find her the next morning, sitting outside the coop.

We washed our muddy truck one afternoon as the chickens returned to the coop. The hen who had disappeared seemed curious as to what we were doing and came over to investigate. It was amusing to hear the group of four all cackling at her because she wasn’t conforming to their plan.

After the new year, we were finally able to arrange our brake replacement. We wanted OEM parts, which would take two weeks to order. Not wanting to overstay our welcome, we checked with Cousin Chris about the timing. He told us that he was enjoying the company and that we were welcome to stay.

Ranch Life

I joined the guys one day to fill the deer feeders. Some of the roads we took to get to the fourteen feeders were barely passable in the truck, and the roads weren’t even particularly muddy that day. Another day, the guys returned with flat tires from the rough road. It was a fun adventure. The ranch is beautiful, teeming with wildlife. There were so many birds to see, as well as squirrels, armadillos, and deer.

On one Saturday, we went to the exotic animal auction. There is a gangplank above the animal pens, where you can get a good look at them. When we first arrived, we looked at the birds. I saw what looked like fancy pigeons in one cage. When I asked what they were, the lady said they were fancy pigeons. I was thrilled to be right. We went up the gangplank to see the larger animals. The most impressive was the large Brahma bull. Just one of his horns was bigger than I was.

As time meandered by, we fell into a routine of waking with the sun and playing golf tournaments on the Xbox before bed. Our competitions were lively. In the morning, we enjoyed the sunrise through the living room window as we sipped our coffee. It was such a peaceful and relaxing environment.

Chris and I both enjoyed getting back into a real kitchen. Both Chris’s enjoyed cooking fresh venison and smoking brisket and venison jerky. I experimented with banana bread, chili with cornbread, shrimp gumbo, beer cheese soup, brisket Benedict, and biscuits with gravy made from Cousin Chris’s homemade sausage.

Chris helped with some of the ranch duties and did some painting. He enjoyed some boar hunting as well, one night returning with a pant leg full of cactus needles. He didn’t notice the cactus he ran through while chasing the pigs in the dim post-sunset lighting.

With the brakes done, we made arrangements for the next part of our trip. Our first thought was to leave the following Friday, but we couldn’t get reservations for camping at the state park. With a little research, we were able to find a slot for two nights on Tuesday instead. Everything else fell into place from there, or so it seemed.

We walked outside a few days later to discover something dripping from the front of the truck. We determined that it was the radiator, which surprised us as we had just replaced it a few months previously. I contacted our mechanic in Virginia to get the information we needed to have it replaced under warranty. While stressful, it was not expensive, and they completed the repair in plenty of time for us to continue our trip without changing our plans.

Anytime Chris took the trash to the dumpster at the ranch’s front gate, I made it a habit to ride along. We never knew what we might see. On our last day, we saw herds of axis deer. When Chris wondered why there were so many more than we had seen any other day, I told him it was because they knew hunting season was over. I enjoyed seeing the beautiful spotted creatures, especially the babies.

On our last night on the ranch, Cousin Chris broke out a lovely bottle of Laphroaig 10-year. We enjoyed the scotch while playing golf on the Xbox until the wee hours of the morning. The time we spent at the ranch will always be a cherished memory and only reinforced our homestead desire.