US 87 -- Between Mason and Cherry Mountain Loop

This stretch was probably one of the prettiest of my trip. The cloud cover broke up pretty quickly once it started, but traffic was picking up and it was a little more difficult to pull off the road safely. I was keeping an eye on my GPS so I wouldn't miss my turn-off, eight and a half miles NW of Fredericksburg. I just knew I didn't want to bother with Fredericksburg's Saturday morning traffic.

Well, I couldn't help myself. After the Easter Bunny and Bambi, etc., I decided I ought to go ahead and import one of Kim's Longhorn cows and a calf to "virtually" graze in this Hill Country pasture. They look great with the bluebonnets and I don't think Kim will mind, though I suppose that technically this might be construed as "virtual rustling". I don't know whether there's a penalty for that or not.

I like both of these. The day's still cool, the flora is varied, and the fence lines provide additional interest.

Here's another one of those gates and enough bluebonnets to suggest what a whole field of them might look like.

I like the texture of the large fence post and the thick grass/weeds in the bottom right corner. That Mesquite probably looks so good because they have huge taproots. They get their water whether anything else around gets any or not.

This is one of my favorites, with the bluebonnets spreading almost to the Oaks and interspersed with a few patches of Yucca.

Ah, here we go. These two, especially the lower one, are good examples of those Bluebonnet fields I've been going on about. In fact, the lower one strikes me as downright idyllic.

This one, with the prickly pear in the foreground, shows why you might miss a pasture like this from the highway. That's a pretty small window at 50 or 60 miles an hour.

This was taken over the main gate of someone's ranch. I thought it was beautiful, and loved the red dirt track stretching back to the interior. The only thing not inviting about it, is the fact that the gate was closed. If they knew how much I liked it, though, they probably would have invited me in.