Today was a really excellent day. After coffee and English muffins we headed off for Mason, Texas which is about 100 miles west of our location in Georgetown. The attraction was the county square (pretty cool), the Art Walk (pretty bleak), lunch at the Square Plate Cafe (truly excellent), the Mason Wildflower Drive (again pretty bleak) and the Llano Fiddle Fest competition (surprisingly good actually).

Here’s a picture of the Mason Country courthouse and then a Ford pickup we found parked across the street. I don’t think it’s got enough oomph to replace BAT for pulling the house.

After that we had lunch at the Square Plate Cafe. Connie had avocado stuffed with chicken salad (all homemade) and Neil had a grilled chicken breast sandwich (again, fresh made from a real chicken breast and not one of those frozen, processed, chopped, sliced, pressed things. We also had iced tea and it had no sugar…which means that by Bryan’s (their human kid) definition we are no longer in the South. Neil thinks that Texas really isn’t part of the South anyway…it was part of the Confederacy but definitely not a Southern state. 

After lunch we headed over to Fort Mason; the original settlement here in 1851 to protect the frontier. We got a nice shot from the base of the ridge in front of the fort of the reconstructed officer’s quarters.

Connie took a couple of the inside but they were through plexiglass and a bit distorted so I’m not going to post them here. Heading off on the Wildflower drive we saw these nice pink flowers along with more Texas Bluebonnets.

We also saw some flowers Connie called Indian Paintbrushes but they weren’t where we could park safely to get a picture…so we headed for our final fun stop of the day; the town of Llano to partake of the Llano Fiddle Fest which is an annual fiddle player competition. We grabbed a picture of the Llano Lantex Arts Center where the Festival is held.

Once we got inside we watched and heard the 19-45 year old segment of the competition; there were about 8 or 9 competitors total. Here are some shots we got of the two players that ended up 1st and 3rd place; we thought the local Llano resident was better but obviously the judges had different taste in fiddle playing than we do. The 2nd place guy we didn’t get a picture of but he suffered an injury partway through his set (his first finger cramped and he couldn’t move it on the strings)…but he eventually got it sorted out and came back to finish playing.

With that we headed home with a brief stop at Walmart to pick up a pizza for dinner and a few groceries that we needed. Dinner was a Meat Trio Pizza with some leftover pineapple chunks from last night’s Chicken Quesadilla…along with a couple of Newcastle beers.

Tomorrow is Mass at Saint Helens and I don’t know what else. Monday is another workday in the morning and then I think Connie has some fun stuff for the afternoon.

Cyas.