Going Green in Gruene, Texas

After hanging out with the locals and taking care of dentist appointments, it was finally time to play tourist on Monday.  We actually started the day with a 7 mile hike inside Guadalupe River State Park.  It was beautiful weather and we found that prickly pear cactus can even grow up in trees.

We also spotted wildlife on this hike—2 wild pigs and a herd of audad.  The audads have huge curved horns and looked like something we had seen in South Africa.  Sure enough, the ranger told us a few had escaped from a wild game ranch in the area that brings in animals from Africa.  As evidenced by all the babies in the herd, they were adapting to life quite well in Texas.  Sorry, all the animals moved faster than the photographers on this blog, so we have no pictorial evidence of our wildlife spottings.

 

Mark then spent three hours kneeling beside or contortioning into the electric bay of our motorhome to install our new Progressive Industries power protector.  This will protect our onboard appliances from surges and brown outs.  All those years of installing network switches and wireless access point were good practice for retirement!

 

After all that hiking and installing, Denisa wasn’t sure if Mark could be up for the real project of the day—visiting Gruene (pronounced “Green”).  This historic village is inside New Braunfels, and is known for its cute shops and eateries.  We had a wonderful meal at the Grist Mill Restaurant overlooking the Guadalupe River at sunset.

The Grist Mill is easy to find, it’s directly under the old Gruene water tower. 

But the real reason for a trip to this historic hamlet was to go to the Gruene Dance Hall—the longest continuously run dance hall in Texas.  Denisa loves to two-step, and this was the best night of dancing she can remember.  Bret Graham was the singer, and he entertained us with nonstop dancing music from 6-10 p.m.  Two ladies from Gruene took us under their wings and gave us the low-down on some of the regular patrons.  We loved the family-friendly non-smoking atmosphere and closed the place down at 10:00.  We hope to dance our way back to Gruene some day!