24 years ago I left Conroe & moved to Lubbock. I went to a small, Christian, private university that required you to live in the dorm for 2 years & honestly, that was probably one of the best things that could have happened to me. That very first year I met 5 incredible girls who ended up being some of my closest friends, still to this day! We are all married, have kids & live in different places, but we have tried our best to keep in touch through the years. We hadn't seen each other since before Covid, so we finally planned a long weekend together. One of our friends lives in Wimberley, down in the Hill Country, outside of Austin, so we booked a house there & met up Thursday night:
We all came in at different times, but we met at the cutest restaurant on their town square - Community Pizza & Beer Garden. We had drinks, pizza & live music all night while we sat on the patio & waited for everyone to arrive.
Our house was the perfect retreat & it even had the perfect name for us:
We spent several really late nights & really lazy mornings visiting. We really enjoyed sitting on the patio late at night under a full bed of stars.
Our first morning, we woke up & were ready to go explore! I was really excited to go to a couple of places I have always heard about, starting with Jacob's Well. It was a short hike to the river, where normally the water is flowing & there is one deep spot where people swim. It's usually so popular you have to go online to make a reservation to swim. However, because of the drought, the river was almost empty. Literally. We could hike down & walk around where usually water is. What little water was left, was covered in moss & algae:
The actual "well" still looked good & you could see pretty deep even though we couldn't jump in it:
On our hike out, one of our friends noticed a bent tree, which we all learned about. Apparently the Native Americans used to bend the trees & have them point to a water source & this one was clearly leaning towards Jacob's Well. Such a fun fact we stumbled upon:
Next stop, we climbed 218 stairs to the peak of Old Baldy:
The view of the hill country was beautiful! Even in a drought, with dry river beds, the trees were still green!
Finally we headed back to downtown Wimberley by the town square to hike along the Cypress Creek. Again, usually the creek would be flowing, but instead, the water level was extremely low & the water was not flowing at all. This was the most we could really see the film on top of the water & you could just imagine the algea & bacteria that is growing in there. We hiked all the way down to Blue Hole, which is a fresh water pond where people swim, but we were pretty bummed to get down there & realize that we couldn't even go down to the water. They had it shut off since all of the water was closed. Instead, this is us hiking by the creek in an area that is usually covered in water:
The next day we decided to go visit several of the vineyards & wineries in the area:
I don't drink but I still enjoyed the views, the live music & the snacks we consumed along the way. Of course, we were that obnoxious group that might have gotten a little loud because we had so much fun visiting everywhere we went!
Eventually we were all starving & ready for dinner so Steph took us to one of her favorite restaurants & turns out, it was my favorite evening of our trip:
They had a 45 minute wait so we ordered drinks & had a great time until our table was ready. We sat outside at a picnic table, on turf, underneath twinkle lights with live music. I mean it was the perfect evening!
There were families everywhere with kids running around & dancing, playing on the turf - our girls would have loved it! And halfway through dinner, we saw a rainbow, so I had to take a picture & send it to the girls:
To end the evening, we had a surprise visitor. Apparently our old RA, who was in charge of our dorm our freshman year, lives in Wimberley also & they invited her to come surprise us:
I cannot tell you how hard we laughed when we started talking about all of the CRAZY things we did when we lived in the dorm. We probably bonded more than most because we actually had a curfew & had to be home every night. And we weren't allowed to have boys in our dorm, so we had a LOT of fun hanging out together those first 2 years!
Man, it was a great weekend! I loved catching up with these girls so much & I think it was a much needed break for all of us to spend a few days away from our husbands & our kids. Thank you Bryan for holding down the fort while I snuck away!
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