The locals can tell you're a tourist if you don't know that "Gruene" is pronounced like "green." The shops around town use that pronunciation with signs that say "Gruene with envy" or "The grass is always Gruener on the other side." We've found that it's a cute little historic town that is filled with lots of Gruene plants.
Blooms are everywhere this time of year, and Denisa was loving it.
On our extra day in the area, we took a walking tour of town. That included a walk over the historic bridge that was built in 1910. It might look blue, but that's the Gruene River.
The Gruene flowers and the Gruene River are nice, but the real reason we stayed an extra day, is for Gruene Hall. This is the oldest dance hall in Texas--one of the best states we've found for dance halls.
We were really disappointed that the day's music line-up was a string of blues performers. That's all right for a little while, but you certainly can't two-step to the blues. If we were blues fans, we probably would have been impressed with the musicians that included the Peterson Brothers, who were being interviewed in the park. But we didn't come to Gruene for the blues!
Even if we couldn't dance, we found some more fun things to look at on our walk around town. We'd never seen anything like these fleshy pods that were starting to unfurl.
The botanical marker under the tree answered our question of, "What is this?" It's a pomegranate tree and this must be a pomegranate bloom. It's situated right beside a women's clothing store called, "The Pomegranate" of course.
Since we were blue about the blues at Gruene Hall (so many colors going on!) we had time to explore the city of New Braunfels that is right next door. We found the river that will be packed with toobers this summer. We wondered how all those toobs will safely make it through the white water at the bottom of the picture.
Here in New Braunfels they've thought of everything. They have built a tube chute that goes around all that rough water and rocks.
The water is still cold in April, but we did get to see one toob shoot out of that chute all the way across the river. It looks like quite a ride!
We also stopped in at Landa Park in New Braunfels for a walk to Founders Oak. This tree has been here since the 1700s, and its 100-foot canopy produces a lot of shade along the river.
That brings us to the last river of the day. We're finding that Hill Country has almost as many rivers as hills. Welcome to Comal River that runs through Landa Park.
That was a nice day, and we're glad we decided to stay for one more day. But we still haven't danced at Gruene Hall, and Mark's brother and sister-in-law just got back to their home not far from here. Maybe we should stay one more day?!? We love the freedom of our full-timing lifestyle!
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