A Birthday Weekend in the Texas Hill Country
We’ve stayed in a few different places in the Texas Hill Country over the years, including Johnson City and Fredericksburg. This time we stayed in Center Point because I had found Texas Wildlife Park nearby and really wanted to go.
I didn't actually look to see how far Center Point was from Fredericksburg until about two weeks before we left, which probably would have been useful information to have before I booked the Airbnb. It turned out to be only about 45 minutes away, so it worked out really well.
We left Dallas much later than we had planned on Thursday, sometime around 2:30 or 3:00, and didn't get to Center Point until after 8:00. It was a beautiful drive, though, and after we arrived we picked up a late dinner from Zanzenberg Tavern and took it back to the Airbnb. We had chicken cordon bleu and sea bass, and the food was fantastic.
That was our first surprise about Center Point. It's a very small town, and I wasn't expecting to find food that good there.
Our Airbnb was another surprise. It had a long covered deck overlooking the Hill Country, and the view was gorgeous. We ended up spending quite a bit of time sitting out there over the next few days. Center Point ended up being a really good home base for us. Comfort was close, Fredericksburg was an easy drive, and there was more nearby than I had expected when I originally chose it simply because it was close to Texas Wildlife Park.
Texas Wildlife Park
Friday morning was the part of the trip I had really been looking forward to.
Our tour at Texas Wildlife Park started at 8:00, which meant we needed to get out of bed around 5:30. It takes us a while to get going in the morning because Steven has to help me get up, dressed and transferred into my wheelchair, and then we still had to drive to the park.
This would have been easier if I had slept.
I went to bed sometime after midnight, woke up at 4:45 and was already on my phone when our alarm went off at 5:00. I had also spent a good portion of the night complaining about the sleeping arrangements, which had irritated Steven.
So we weren't exactly delightful company at 5:30 in the morning.
But we made it.
Texas Wildlife Park isn't a traditional zoo where you buy a ticket and wander around on your own. It's a family-owned wildlife park and education center, and visits are done by appointment with a guide. The park was in development for close to a decade before opening to the public, with a focus on animal care, conservation and education.
Our guide also told us about Rick, who started the park, and about some of the animals that had been rescued or rehomed before ending up there. Hearing some of their stories made the experience much more personal than simply moving from enclosure to enclosure.
Our tour lasted about 2½ hours, and I couldn't name everything we saw without going back through all of Steven's pictures.
There were tigers, spotted hyenas, bears, monkeys, lemurs, otters, a porcupine, prairie dogs, capybaras, coatis, bobcats, a serval, a clouded leopard, a mountain lion, a fennec fox, birds, reptiles and quite a few others.
I also knew almost nothing about clouded leopards before seeing one. They're incredible climbers. Their ankle joints allow them to climb down trees headfirst, and their long tails help them balance. They also have unusually long canine teeth in proportion to the size of their skulls.
Then there was the porcupine. I learned that porcupines cannot actually shoot their quills, which is one of those things I accepted as fact sometime during childhood and never thought to question.
And then there was a white turkey with what looked like black hair growing out of the middle of its chest.
I was curious about that.
It isn't hair. It's called a beard, and it's made of specialized bristles related to feathers. Beards are much more common in male turkeys, although females can have them too.
I had no idea turkeys had beards.
What really made the morning different, though, was how close we were able to get to some of the animals. We fed lemurs and had several other up-close encounters during the tour.
And then there were the sloths.
We got to hand-feed two them.
I've seen sloths before, but I had never been this close to one. Sitting there and handing food directly to them was completely different from watching one hanging in a tree or sleeping in an enclosure.
One of them reached out while we were feeding and would grab our hand for more.
We fed both sloths and got to spend enough time with them that it didn't feel like someone rushed us in, took a picture and moved us along.
The whole 2½-hour tour was incredible. We had gone there because I wanted to experience Texas Wildlife Park, and it ended up being even better than I expected.
After we left the wildlife park, we drove into Fredericksburg and had lunch at Halter Ranch before heading back to Center Point.
Once we got back to the Airbnb, we were finished for the day. We sat outside on the deck enjoying the view and never went out again. We didn't even have an official dinner. We ate snacks and stayed there for the evening.
It was a very good way to end a very long day.
Saturday morning we drove to Comfort to meet our friend Val for brunch. She lives in Fredericksburg but needed to head to San Antonio afterward, so Comfort worked well for everyone. We went to Shelby's Dae-ly Cafe, a place none of us had been before.
It was the cutest little place.
I had a breakfast bowl, and Steven and Val had breakfast sandwiches. The cookies were so good that we bought some to take with us, along with another sandwich.
I still don't entirely understand how this adorable little café exists where it does, but I'm very glad somebody decided it should.
After brunch, Val headed toward San Antonio and Steven and I spent most of the afternoon doing one of our favorite things to do in the Hill Country. We drove.
We did the Three Sisters route and spent hours going through the hills. We weren't trying to get anywhere quickly. We just wanted to see the scenery.
We've always enjoyed driving through this part of Texas. Sometimes we have a destination and sometimes the drive itself is the destination. There are roads where you come around a curve and suddenly have another enormous view in front of you, and we spent hours doing exactly that.
By Saturday evening we had made our way back to Fredericksburg and needed dinner. We chose Granite House Lounge and ordered takeout.
Granite House is in a charming little house, and when Steven went inside to pick up our food it was packed. They also had a cute Halloween display set up outside. I liked getting to see the restaurant, but I was very happy we hadn't planned to eat there. With that many people inside, navigating it in my wheelchair would have been difficult.
We didn't exactly order a traditional dinner, either. We got onion rings, fries, spinach and artichoke dip, New Orleans-style shrimp and a side house salad, then took everything back to Center Point.
That was dinner.
Sunday morning we checked out of the Airbnb and drove back to Fredericksburg for the National Museum of the Pacific War.
We spent several hours there and made it through, although Steven definitely would have liked more time.
Except we still weren't quite finished.
We wanted to drive Devil's Backbone, so instead of taking the most direct route home, we took another scenic one.
At the Devil's Backbone Scenic Overlook, we stopped at the top and looked out over the Hill Country.
Along the fence were crosses and other small memorials people had left for loved ones who had died. I hadn't known they were there. There were so many of them, all different and personal, with that huge view stretching out behind the fence.
We stayed there for a little while before getting back in the car and continuing toward home.
There is one completely unrelated recommendation I need to include because I don't want to forget it: SKIPPY Double Peanut Butter P.B. Bites.
We bought them for the road before the trip, and they were easily my favorite snack of the weekend.
Peanut butter on the outside. Peanut butter on the inside.
That's basically the entire concept, and it works.
By the time we were about an hour and a half from home Sunday evening, Steven and I had already decided we were ordering pizza for dinner.
It was a short birthday trip, and we didn't try to fill every available minute. We spent a lot of time driving through a part of Texas we've enjoyed for years. We found some really good little places, spent an evening sitting on the deck looking at the hills, went to a museum Steven could have happily stayed in much longer and took the scenic route home because we still had a little more we wanted to see.
Texas Wildlife Park was the reason we stayed in Center Point, and I'm very glad it was.
We saw an incredible number of animals that morning, and I learned a few things I didn't know before I got there.
But I think the part I'm going to remember most is sitting there feeding a sloth while it held on with those enormous claws.
I can't imagine getting many opportunities in life to do that.
And I'm really glad I got this one.
