face to face

Last Sunday I drove to Gruene (pronounced like the color green), an almost 2 1/2 hour drive, to meet up with my friend Dana who lives in Ohio. Dana flew into Austin a day early on work related travel and since I don't really know anything about Austin and I was in charge of the outing I picked Gruene, a historic small town in the Hill Country about an hour south of Austin. Well, it was a small town at one time. Now it's been encompassed by New Braunfels and has become a designated historic district.

Gruene was established upstream of New Braunfels on the Guadalupe River in the mid 1840s by the German immigrant Gruene family. They planted cotton and built a mill on the river. Other buildings followed as the family cotton farm prospered and drew more families including the Gruene Hall which is now the oldest dance hall in Texas which continues to draw big crowds with live music just about every night. You can read a more detailed history of the town, it's rise, fall, and rescue, here. Nowadays, it's a tourist destination.

Anyway, last weekend was one of their Market Days that they have every month which was basically an art and craft fair so I thought that would give us something to do and then have lunch and then just sort of drive around the area up River Road to Canyon Lake and then back around to Gruene via Purgatory Road (sounds more exciting than it actually is).

This is the first time Dana of Bug's Eye View and I have ever met face to face 

but the visit felt like spending the day with an old friend, which she says, I guess we are. Dana and I have been connected to each other via the blog world for 7 years.

I had to scroll back through my old posts trying to find when Dana first started showing up in the comments which turned out to be August 2009 after just selecting ones at random and man, did I write some great posts! So yeah, Mary Moon, what the hell happened?

We strolled around the market fair with vendors selling handmade items and Texas sourced foods and stuff but it was really hot even at 11 AM which was the time we arranged to meet and I had forgotten to bring a hat and Dana didn't have one either so we retreated into an air conditioned antique/gift store

and then a garden metal art and other doodads outdoor area where I found a kinetic art piece I want and did not take a picture of and then two shops that turned out to be standard souvenir shops and then we checked out Gruene Hall the oldest dance hall in Texas 

and then had lunch at the Gristmill which is located in the old cotton mill on the river.

After lunch and our little scenic or not so scenic drive around the area it was time to part ways.

Dana had commented that the scenery wasn't much different than what she was used to, green, rolling hills, rivers and she was hoping to see what it was like where I lived so I stopped and took a photo on the way home of my neck of the woods...the flat flat coastal plains where agriculture and cattle reign supreme...and sent it to her.