Timely Updates: Day 2: Wineries, chocolate, and Krause Springs

Our second day, Sunday, was much more relaxing. We slept late, which was much needed, and then Gene and Elena gave us a delicious breakfast, packed up all the necessary supplies, and took us on a tour of the Texas Hill Country. Despite the hilarious primer at Esther's Follies, I am still quite hazy on Texan geography, but given that Texas is quite a large state, it is not unreasonable to assume that it can engulf a country or two... Texas Hill Country, in particular, is famous for its wineries, among other things.

We started with wine tasting at the Becker Vineyard. When you purchase a tasting, you get a free sample plus 6 tickets, and a list of about 20 local wines: red, rose, white, dry and semi-sweet...

The grounds are beautiful, too bad I didn't take any pictures. We were sitting in the shade, on a stone terrace, looking out at the beautiful landscape, every once in a while making forays to the tasting station to redeem a ticket, and eating cheese and crackers that were part of the necessary supplies... I was concentrating exclusively on the reds, some of them were pretty good, we especially liked the Petite Sirah. Here is a picture that we took after the tasting: there is a field of blooming poppies right outside the winery, with another field of blooming lavender next to it... They have a shop with lavender products as well, which I ignored because I still have the ones from the farm on Maui.

After we were done at the winery, Gene drove a little way back down the same road, because Elena noticed a "Chocolate Tasting" sign on the way up. Sure enough, there was a Chocolates El Rey store, and we were just in time for a tasting. Each of us was given a tray with 12 small samples, like they show on the website. We tried them all, and I liked the darkest one best... surprise, surprise!

Then it was time for a swim! Krause Springs is a privately owned camping and swimming site. It has 32 springs on the property, and these springs feed a man-made pool at the top and a natural pool at the bottom, with a waterfall. Here are some pictures taken at the top pool.

From the hole under this ledge, the water trickles down and becomes the waterfall over the natural pool at the bottom.

Here Gene and Alex are inflating the rafts, which were also part of the necessary supplies, along with the electric pump. We were not quite alone at the pool, but it wasn't crowded and we spent a couple of hours swimming or just relaxing in the rafts.