Menard's Pecans and Presidio

 After some very cold nights, and quite chilly days, we are anxious to get further south. So we headed another 100 miles straight south to Menard County RV Park in Menard, Texas. This is a one-night stop, so we decided to stay at this no-frills park just a mile off the highway, rather than going to the nearest Texas state park that was ten miles out of our way. We're adjacent to the San Saba River, where groves of old pecan trees enjoy the extra moisture near the river. 

Almost every winter we seem to have a camping spot surrounded by native pecan trees. It's just the right time of year to find a bountiful harvest just laying around on the ground. We actually saw two other couples picking up pecans in the park on this nice-weather afternoon. With all the recent wind and cold weather, many of the nuts have just fallen to the ground. Sometimes, you could pick up twenty pecans without even moving your feet.

We moved to another grove of old pecan trees in a public park in town. Denisa loves this Easter-egg-like hunt for pecans, and Mark is just nice enough to go along with her game.

Native pecans are sometimes very small, or sometimes shriveled up and dry inside. So we tried to be selective and pick up only the bigger nuts. We also did some cracking and tasting for quality control. After several stops at a couple different groves, we have a nice bag full of pecans to keep us supplied for a while.

We also found that Menard is the location of one of the biggest Spanish forts built in Texas.

Built in 1757, the Presidio de San Saba is one of the oldest historic sites in Texas. This was once an enclosed fort where many people lived. While most of the walls are now gone, we took this picture from one corner towards the other corner of the fort to show its size.

Its goal was to protect the Spanish settlers, as well as the Spanish Mission down the road, from the Indians. They weren't very successful, as the Indians raided the Mission and massacred the priests in 1758. A tiny wooden church on the grounds next to the Presidio stands in memory of the mission that did not survive.

The fort was only in use for about a decade. When it was abandoned, its stone walls fell down. Many of those stones were used to build other local projects like the town's cemetery walls, and various homes and buildings in the area. In the 1930's a push was made to rebuild this historic Presidio site, and some of the walls were rebuilt. 

Today they are still patching and repairing the stone work that was first laid 265 years ago. We watched as a mason worked on the round turret at the corner of the fort.

We were only here in Menard for 24 hours, but we enjoyed getting to know about another little Texas town. We learned a little history, and we'll enjoy the pecans in the months to come. It was a nice little stop on the plains of Texas.