Enchanted Rock and Enchanted Luckenbach

After tanking up on German food in Fredericksburg, we drove straight north to the Enchanted Rock State Park for the rest of the afternoon.  This is a fascinating park, centered around a huge pink granite dome that balloons out of the Texas hills.  It is hard to describe how big it is, and we find that pictures just can't do it justice.  But if you look carefully at the top of the dome in the picture below you will see tiny dots.  Those tiny dots are people, and we wanted to be one of them.  This dome covers 640 acres, and rises 425 feet above the surrounding terrain.  It's the largest pink granite monadnock in the United States.  Just try using "monadnock" in the next conversation you have with someone you are trying to impress.

Much of Texas is enjoying spring break this week, so it was really crowded.  In fact, we saw visitors from all over the world climbing the dome with  us.

It takes some really technical hiking to get to the top of the dome.  Here is Denisa inching her way with careful toe grips and her fingers clutching at any niche in the rock for support.

Actually, the slope is quite gentle, and this is actually a picture of Denisa lying on her stomach, pretending to be a climber.  She obviously wouldn't have made it to the top if technical skills were required!  We did notice, however, that the girth of the climbers that made it to the very top were significantly smaller than that of the group that started the climb.

The very top of the dome is a huge gently curved area, that has indentions large enough to hold water and an occasional garden that God planted there.

Denisa had read that there was a cave that meanders through the inside of the dome, and we were just stupid enough to try it.  We were more prepared than some people, as we knew to wear jeans, and we brought flash lights.  It is completely dark and wet and slippery inside the cave.

Mark inherited some claustrophobic tendencies from his Mother, so Denisa wasn't sure he would try it.  But there were actually very few people that did the cave route, so it was the least busy part of the park.  There were several times that we had to lie down and wiggle through a crevice into the next part of the cave.  We were never in an area that was big enough to stand up, so it was really hard to get a picture of the inside of the cave.  This was the largest section of the entire thing.

There was a young guy in front of us that almost got stuck two different times in the smaller passages.  You know how there are compartments at the airport that you must fit your carry-on luggage into before you take it on the airplane.  This guy commented that there should have been a compartment at the beginning of the cave that you had to fit inside to see if you could enter.

Mark barely made it through a couple passages himself.  Like on all hikes, he was carrying several tangerines with him.  They were in a sack and were made into tangerine juice by the end of the cave.  Several people commented on the curious smell of citrus in the cave that day.  

He also had his phone in his pocket, and we were really sad to discover that the camera lens broke when Mark was wiggling through one of those tight spots.  We're not exaggerating about the small spaces we inched through! So Denisa's triumphal emergence from the cave exit could not be captured using the normal camera on the back.  But the good news is the front "selfie" lens was still intact.

The cave was completely dark, so you didn't know who was immediately in front or behind you.  When Denisa climbed out, the guy in front of Mark was surprised to see her.  He commented that Denisa was tougher than she looked.  We're not sure if that was a compliment or not.
 
Because we use Mark's camera for most blog pictures, it was the only camera with us.  So the following pictures are taken with the camera tilted in front of the photographer, hoping to capture what you are pointing toward.  Here Mark is pointing the camera toward Denisa in another tough pose of holding this huge boulder from rolling over the dome's edge.

After our hike up the dome, and our crawl through the cave, we decided we were also up for the 4-mile loop trail that completely encircles the enchanted rock.  It was a great trail that gave us views of the back side of the rock.  At the end of our hike, Mark had just enough energy to climb up on this rock that the setting sun was highlighting.

That meant that our fabulous day was coming to an end, but we had one more stop to make.  We had never been to Luckenbach, Texas, and we were too close to miss it today.  On weekday evenings, they have jam sessions from 5-9 p.m.  We stayed long enough to check out the entire town of Luckenbach (that proudly posts it has a population of 3) and danced to a couple of songs.

It had been a long and very fun day.  We left home before 10 a.m. and got back after 9 p.m.  This retirement life can be really tiring, so we might need to take the day off tomorrow!