October 27, 2002: Arizona Trip Day 2
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We are going to begin our Arizona trip this Saturday morning by driving down to the Hill Country west of San Antonio to visit Frank Roberts and Joe Wells. You just saw them performing at the State Fair of Texas, and now we are going to take advantage of the fact that we have drive way south in any event to make a detour a bit out of our way to pay them a visit. Fred has coordinated with them for us to stay with them tonight; tomorrow we will leave on the long drive to Arizona.

Getting to Frank and Joe's

You may have seen the route down to Frank and Joe's place near Leakey before, but if you haven't and you are curious, here it is.

From Dallas, we head south on I-35 to Austin. There, we go around the west side of the city on Texas Highway 1, which brings us south of town and the junction with US 290. We take that all the way through Johnson City and on into Fredericksburg.

There, we turn south towards Kerrville. At Kerrville, we could take back roads further south, but it is a bit quicker to go west a bit on I-10 to Texas Highway 41, which takes us southwest towards The Hill Country.

After about 40 miles, we come to US 83 which, at this point runs north-south, and we take that highway south until just before we enter the town of Leakey, TX. There is a small airstrip just north of town, and there we turn northwest onto a local ranch road.

We take that local road north for a few miles and then come to Bonner Road, where we turn right. This dirt road takes us to the low water crossing across a small tributary of the Frio River. A low water crossing means that the road goes across a low concrete dam that has culverts through it. Most times of the year, there is either no water in the streambed, or not so much that the culverts can't handle it and the road stays dry. After spring rains, though, there can be so much water that it simply runs across the concrete dam, but when it does, it is usually only a few inches deep. There are times when the road is impassable, but these are rare, and there are other ways for Frank and Joe to get to their place on the east side of the stream.

On the east side of the stream, the road climbs a hill and turns north again, acting as the common driveway for three or four homes that are up on the hillside. One of them is Frank and Joe's.

After we'd gotten to the top of the hill and turned left towards the house that Frank and Joe have built, we could look back west and get a view of Bonner Road coming in from the highway.

And then we turned in to the driveway to Frank and Joe's house, arriving there about two in the afternoon. Joe was there to meet us; Frank was still at work at Garner State Park about ten miles south of Leakey, and he didn't get back until about five. We went into Leakey to have dinner at a local Mexican restaurant.

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	October 27, 2002: Arizona Trip Day 2
	Return to the Index for Our Arizona Trip