Last day in Fredricksburg and Luckenback

This morning started off at the friendly Java Ranch. A very personable friendly (and good looking!) young man served us our coffees,  I complimented him on his good service.  The Java Ranch has an amazing painted wall all along one side of the space. The space is probably about 30 feet long and the entire wall is a painted mural. The scene is of a ranch, meadow, corral of horses, cows in the field, campfire, cowpokes branding, and at one end the artists (who are cowboys) painted themselves into the mural. Lee and Matt Casbeer signed the mural with their web address......LMCMURALS.COM. They have a studio in Johnston City, Texas just a few miles down the road. Johnston City is where president Lyndon Johnston had his ranch and it is now a park, where you can see his former home and his grave.  While we were having our coffee our "friends" from Baton Rouge Louisiana came in for breakfast again, they were hitting the road for home today. I gave them my business/calling card and said to contact us if they ever took a ride or vacation up to Canada. They, Jan, Joey, Laurie, and Andy gave me their card and said likewise to contact them if we made it to Louisiana.  Jan has since emailed me that she has read some of the blog! So Jan if you are reading again.....please do stay in touch if you are coming to the Cave Creek area as we are often there as well.
We walked down the one side of Main Street that we hadn't checked out, it was extremely humid and cloudy....but still really hot! Nice to pop into a shop for respite air conditioning.
When we were here back in 2010 we went to a place down Luckenback way called Alamo Springs. This place is an old fashioned 50's style diner that serves thee best hamburgers we had ever had. So, we were headed there for lunch, the route is like a country lane, winding, a little hilly and truly a pleasure to travel. UNTIL you get there and the darn #⃣🔣@$&!!!!place is closed! So disappointing! Right beside the restaurant is the park that is for viewing the bats. There is an old railway tunnel that is now a bat cave and they come out at dusk by the thousands to eat their weight in insects. It was definitely not dark at 3pm but we walked down to the tunnel to have a look. As we peered into the tunnel we could see at the opposite end bats swarming like crazy. So, been there done that, won't be going at night!
At this point we were pretty well starving, having saved ourselves for the most amazing burger. We had to drive back Into Fredricksburg, and had a mediocre  burger at Whataburger. Whataburger now on the crossed off, don't do again list.
Then it was back out to Luckenback for one final visit.  We got there about 4:30 and David was the lone picker in the circle, he has a great voice and like many of the pickers they like to chat to the beer drinking clientele. He was soon finished and two other musicians we were familiar with and really enjoyed arrived. An hour went by and there were now 6 musicians in the pickers circle.  Now, there are a lot of chickens and roosters who live at Luckenback. These birds are a pretty big attraction at Luckenback, they rule the roost so to speak!  It is actually a big part of the country charm of the place. You see, their wings are not clipped so they can fly, and they do! In the outside area where the picnic benches are the large oak trees create a canopy over everything. The birds are roaming underfoot, under benches, on the picker circle area, strutting by the musicians and flying up Into the trees where they squawk and crow!  At one point one of the hens was laying an egg in the open coop by the side of the seating area, the proud rooster stood beside her and crowed non stop, so loud that he was drowning out the musicians! The girl tending bar had to come out and swoosh the rooster away. Quite comical, definitely entertaining.
One of the pickers who liked to engage the listeners, getting us to join in on the chorus of well known songs started asking a few in the audience where they were from. Most were from Texas, maybe a hundred miles or so away, when we said we were from Vancouver Canada.....whoa! And then on a motorbike....Whoa! They then sang a few Canadian country songs in our honour.....that's just the kind of people they are.
There is one old guy there who took a shine to us, and us to him, we enjoyed just chatting to him about simple stuff, like how he lived a mile down the road, had some health issues and had his licence revoked, so now he is allowed to drive a type of atv for a radius of a few miles. He spends his time at Luckenback and everyone knows him and looks out for him, there are a few old timers like him and it seems to be the same for them.
Finally we decided it was time to leave, I gave the old guy a hug and told him to be here next time we come. He said he would be .  A couple of the musicians shook hands and gave me a hug, said you be safe now and y'all come back soon.
Such nice people and such a nice place.
We drove the 10 miles back to town with a lightening storm lighting up a big white cloud on our right, it seemed to follow us all the way to town. We parked the bike at our hotel, The Sunday House, and walked down Main Street a little way, to a brew pub for dinner. While we were there the rain came down hard for about 15 minutes then passed over.  It looked like we would be able to walk back without getting wet and the restaurant was closing. As we left a serving girl spotted my boots and oh, I love your boots, can I touch them? Did you buy them here? Disappointment when I said no, I got them in Cave Creek, Arizona.
My boots have attracted lots of attention this trip!