I still enjoy the music, chatting with the bikers and eating a hot dog. Of course, I don't let simple chitt bother me. Life's too short.
Maybe my problem is I was all over that place 25-30 years ago, on a motorcycle, maybe once or twice each month. Used to be about the best place in the world to drink a beer on a Sunday afternoon.
In my old, old days we'd leave College Station from Dudley's late in the night and ride to Enchanted Rock, and be on top of that bilion year-old granite batholith in time to watch the sun rise.
Leaving after the sun was up, I do recall hitting 120 mph on the FM road to Fredericksburg one time. We weren't generally quite that lunatic (still being alive after all) but the point is the volume of traffic wont permit anything like that now.
Pretty sure they lock the gates to E. Rock at 10 pm now, in part to control the crowds
Then breakfast in Fredericksburg followed by a nap under the trees at Luckenbach. If we was in the area late enough we'd ride over to Grapetown and sit on the ledge outside the mouth of the old railway tunnel by the hippie commune where you was shortly to be right in a stream of several tens (hundreds?) of thousands of freetail bats.
The hippie commune is gone under to high dollar (gated?) home sites now. Drive on past that entrance and there's an extensive housing development and even an upscale restaurant that draws crowds of the minivan and SUV set. The railroad tunnel (from the 1860's) and the bats are still there, but the state runs it, and stern manly ladies in park ranger uniforms will admonish you to sit some distance away on a set of bleachers and be quiet "so you don't disturb the bats").
At least, last time I was through, the old German Sheutzen range on the Grapetown Road is still up, stunning though just how much along that road has gone under, forever.
Plainly, judging by the large volume of people and their moving rafts of vehicles, folks still like Luckenbach, but its a shadow of what it was, even compared to just 25 years ago. And a real shame to see that beautiful area go under, and still continue to go under.
Problem is, it is too close to the booming Round Rock/Austin/San Antonio population corridor, and suffering accordingly.
Other's MMV,
Birdwatcher
