Two-part Blog: Part 1 - Morning Volksmarch - Sat., Aug. 16

I was up late night last night, with early wake-up call at 5:30 a.m. today. I was meeting Susan and Caryl at 7:00 a.m. for a Volksmarch in New Braunfels, Texas. We have to start early to beat the South Texas heat!

We carpooled from Caryl's house in northeast San Antonio up to New Braunfels with one quick stop at Walmart for Caryl. Her sunglasses were back at her house and with the bright sunshine, she really needed them for the walk. As we entered Walmart, the sunglasses stared us in the face as we walked in the door. You'd think everyone forgot their sunglasses and had to buy new ones!

From there we headed to the walk start point at The Faust Hotel in New Braunfels, signed in, stamped our books, picked up the walk directions and headed out on an 11K (6.8 mi.) walk. Start time: 7:47 a.m.

New Braunfels has a lot of beautiful murals and we were early enough that no one had parked in front of them yet. My favorite mural of the day is the one below which is painted on the Feste Halle on the Wurstfest grounds.

This mural captures the spirit of the Wurstfest.

Our walk took us past the old fire station, the Sophienburg Museum, many old homes, the County Courthouse, the Wurstfest grounds, through Landa Park, along the Comal River, past The Schlitterbahn water park, and through downtown New Braunfels. Lots and lots to look at.

If you ever plan to drive through New Braunfels in your RV, you might want to remember this: Business Route 46 has an 11' 8" underpass. You can see all the scrape marks and gouges in the concrete from truckers and RVers who didn't know how high their rigs were! Be careful out there.

Here are more murals and other photos from our walk. I should mention that Texans love to inner tube on the many cool, spring-fed rivers. In Texas this is called "toobing."

Mural showing Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels Germany,
founder of New Braunfels

If you'd like to go to Wurstfest 2014, here are the dates.
(Hint: It's a big Oktoberfest-like German celebration.)

Below is a maibaum (maypole) for New Braunfels. Maypoles show the history of a town. In the photo below the maibaum picture is a list of what all the symbols on the maypole represent.

Maibaum near entrance to Landa Park

From here we turned the corner toward Landa Park. For a more graphic depiction of the history of New Braunfels, here is a series of murals painted on one of the Wurstfest buildings...

They go WAY back with their history

Still WAY back

Native Americans

Native American tipis

Farming and cattle ranching

Early black settlers

The building of the town

Landa Park is always a welcome destination on the Volksmarch because you're sure to see some type of wildlife. Today it was deer. This young doe let us get within ten feet of her. I think someone must be feeding her. She followed us for a bit.

Don't you just want to hug her?

Landa Park is home to the William and Dolores Schumann Arboretum. I actually found the identification of a tree with pretty pink flowers that I have been puzzling over. It's a chitalpa tree.

From Landa Park we walked past the back side of the Wurstfest grounds on our way to Hinman Island Park and the lovely Comal River. We were hot and I would have loved to jump in the river for a little swim. However, that would have made for a soggy finish to our walk, so I refrained. We did watch toobers on the river. Many people had two toobs: one for their body and one for their cooler. People were streaming down from the parking lot at the park carrying their toobs with them.

Toobers on the Comal River

More toobers heading for the water

One of the many toob rental businesses

Next, we walked past The Schlitterbahn water park. It was only 9:30 a.m. so it wasn't too crowded yet.

The line at the top

Doesn't this look like a blast?

Comal River from the bridge

Loved the artistic peacock in front of a dress store.

Naegelin's Bakery (the oldest continuously operating bakery in Texas) was on our route and I really wanted to stop in for a treat; however, the line was so long I gave up on that idea very quickly. We wanted to finish our walk and we only had a couple of blocks left to go.

Instead of the bakery, Susan, Caryl and I decided to eat breakfast at IHOP. You could tell we had walked 6.8 miles by how quickly we devoured our food. I love IHOP's new egg scramble breakfast. My favorite is the California Scramble: scrambled eggs with jack and cheddar cheeses, salsa, and sliced avocado on top. With that you get hash browns, and a choice of toast, flour tortilla or two buttermilk pancakes. Pancakes for me, please. All that for $6.99!!

After all the morning's excitement, I went home, showered, then slept for two hours.

So ended Part 1 of Saturday. I'll get to Part 2 tomorrow. You'll hear all about Foodstock.

Travel Bug out.