I might have had a burger or two at Alamo Springs Cafe over the years! Watching the bats come out of the tunnel next door is cool.
There once was a time when the Alamo Springs Cafe wasn't there yet, nor that whole acreage homesite development, there was an actual surviving commune up that dirt road past the railway tunnel. Used to be you would head north out of Luckenbach, hang a left on the old Grapetown Road and then hang a left again at the "T" junction at the Old San Antonio Road. A cool ride, past the Grapetown Shuetzen Verein and with a couple of sudden dips steep enough to catch air on, even two-up.
Then on the left after you passed an old German stone farmhouse or two there was the open gravel area where ya parked to watch the bats come out. You could sit with your legs swinging on the top of the actual cut leading up to the tunnel. First a few scattered bats, then the rustle of hundreds of thousands along with a bat wing-generated breeze like from an electric fan except it positively reeked of ammonia (how nobody got airborne rabies I dunno). They would spiral up out of the cut, you were right at the edge of the swarming bats which looked unreal, like movie special effects, you could reach out and touch one.
Always there were one or two pale (or albino I dunno) bats visible in the horde at any given moment that you could follow in their upward spiral, once clear of the cut the whole bat swarm rose up like a cloud of smoke blowing in the breeze, a long line of bats steadily climbing. Look to the north and you'd see the bat swarm from the other end of the tunnel maybe 100 yards away on private land.
This was up until about 1990, at that time the State took over the tunnel, and then the heavyset, stern-looking short-haired women in Park Service uniforms arrived, making everyone stay away from near the railroad cut and sit on a set of bleachers about 25 yards back and telling everyone to be quiet lest they disturb the bats.
After that I quit stopping at the bat tunnel.
