Today I drove to a produce market and bought fruit. Not amazing, except it is the first time in two months that I have driven my car. (My husband has used it on alternate weeks to keep the battery charged.)
At the market, I wore my face mask. The market allowed only 10 customers at a time. Within the market, duct-taped arrows on the floor directed me around the fruit and vegetable stands – if I missed something, no turning back. I avoided putting my choices in bags as much as possible – everything went into one bag at the check-out station, which was shielded by plastic curtains except where I could insert my credit card for the check-out.
For a decade we have been asked to bring our own reusable bags to shop. Now reusable bags are possible vectors of infection, and the plastic bag makers are staging a comeback. All I can do is to pile my fruit and vegetables all together in one cart, let the checkout clerk sort, and put my purchases into one paper bag.
Public transportation, re-usable bags, cluster housing – all those ecologically correct ideas are now hazardous – how can we save the planet now?
The San Jose Mercury-News had a featured op-ed on the opinion page about “the unprecedented economic costs of COVID-19.” The article cited an estimate from “our team of economists, public policy researchers, and other experts” of over $14 trillion lost due primarily to workplace absences and lost sales. But authors Jakub Hlavka and Adam Rose noted that “we didn’t estimate a vast array of indirect costs, such as … mental health effects on the population and the learning loss experienced by students.”
Already, graphs and charts show economies bouncing back, workers returning to unused offices, or the offices being repurposed. What can’t be measured, as Hlavka and Rose admitted, is the collateral damage to families and communities, and what can’t be predicted is the length of time required to truly heal.
I know a young woman who was a junior in college when COVID hit. Lockdown forced her into an unrelenting intimacy with her roommates which ended in hard feelings and frayed friendships. No internships or jobs materialized in the long locked-down summer. To save money in her senior year, since all classes were being held remotely, she lived with her father and stepmother. Again, the stress of too much proximity led to an argument, an explosion, things said that were hard to forgive, and now the daughter has been estranged from that part of her family for over two years.
I know a young man who was a high school senior taking advanced classes. Lockdown in the spring quarter of his senior year meant none of the traditional rites of passage happened: no Senior Sneak Day, no Senior Prom, no Yearbook signing, no Grad Night. He decided to take a gap year rather than spend his freshman year (and tuition) on Zoom classes. He did not make good use of the gap year, and when he started at an excellent private college he was out of the habit of attending to class schedules, dorm rules, and course requirements. He has narrowly avoided expulsion, and after turning over and spoiling a number of new leafs, hopes to start again this fall in a local public university.
Younger children, also, have been affected in hard-to-measure ways. A pre-kindergartener I know was outgoing and self-confident about meeting new people, but during lockdown she saw almost no-one except her parents. An extended trip before starting kindergarten didn’t provide much more opportunity for interaction with strangers without her parents beside her. Now in kindergarten, she is doing well in classes, but any disruption to her normal after-school and bedtime rituals may bring on a meltdown. She has never been put to bed by anyone but Mommy or Daddy that she can remember, and she’s not ready to start now.
Multiply these examples by hundreds and thousands. Then try to measure the disappointment, pain and anxiety that has been caused by COVID-19’s social disruption. How many tears add up to a dollar?
You wake up in the spacious master suite of the home you designed yourself on 140 acres of open land. You make your coffee and stroll out to the spacious veranda which runs across the front of the house, looking out over a pasture with cows and pecan trees, and an occasional herd of deer or feral hogs around the pond. It’s bluebonnet season, and the blossoms are carpeting patches of the pasture.
Next to the white ranch house, but not too close, is the barn/workshop which stores equipment for maintaining the fence that keeps the cows, deer, and feral hogs away from the nearby vegetable garden, green with lettuce beginning to bolt, sugar peas just ready to harvest, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant well along. It’s a bit too early for the strawberries and blackberries. You check the chicken coop for eggs and find enough for breakfast for you, your spouse, and guests who are bedded down in the wing on the other side of the kitchen.
Breakfast includes the eggs, bread you made yourself, and blackberry jam from last year’s berries. After breakfast you see your daughter, son-in-law, and three granddaughters walking over from their house just kitty-corner across the pasture. (You designed their home also, when you and your spouse and your daughter’s family agreed that buying the property together would be a good move.) You leave the guests to entertain themselves while the two families jump into your SUV and off you go for a morning of soccer.
Back in time for lunch, you serve everyone goulash made of home-grown broccoli, ground venison shot and butchered by yourself on your property, and wild rice.
After lunch you take the guests for a tour of the new San Saba County Musuem, assembled and curated by volunteers, very creatively arranged by types of activity (law, business, church, school, home , children , agriculture , ranching, etc). You are a board member of the Museum, and can regale your guests with a fountain of info and anecdotes. including why Queen Victoria named San Saba “the World’s Capital of Pecans”.
Then you take the guests on a tour of the town of San Saba starting with the “Longest continuously used jail in Texas”, the refurbished courthouse (painted in authentic avocado green and harvest gold), lovely old homes in various states of repair, and the Methodist Church, “the only church in Texas built entirely of local marble” with lumpy white pillars like stacks of slightly bubbly marshmallow on a skewer.
Back at the ranch, your spouse prepares the charcoal grill while you take the guests on a tour of the property on your electric golf cart, checking out the wildlife feeders and adjacent hunting blinds, but no feral hogs or deer to be seen, only placid cows. At 5 pm the family across the pasture arrives preparatory to dinner. You sit on the veranda, the men talking hunting, fishing, trapping, the girls playing hobby horse or doing gymnastics on the lawn, the women exchanging information about cooking, planting, and coping with energy blackouts, (Your houses have solar panels and backup generators, so no worries) while the girls are playing hobby horse or doing cartwheels on the lawn.
Dinner is home-grown broccoli, oven-baked new potatoes, and the grilled chicken. After dinner you all sit on the veranda and watch the stars – the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and a glowing cloud that may be the Milky Way. It’s not quite a Dark Sky, as the moon is rising over the roof and the horizon is lit by the surrounding towns, but pretty close. “Orion just leaps out of the sky at you,” says one of the guests.
You tell the guests of a visitor from Boston who looked up awestruck and said “I can’t believe this! how come you have so many more stars in Texas than we have in Boston?” He couldn’t believe that the stars were there in Boston, but obscured by urban glare.
A fantasy? There are some downsides to being some distance from a grocery store or a doctor or a local school or a library, but overall, the Good Life outside of San Saba looks pretty fine to me. I was one of the guests.
W and I agreed on the first day to shift off driving every two hours, although she grew a bit impatient at my refusing to drive faster than 65 on a two-lane road where the posted speed is 75. Texas drivers seem to have no fear of oncoming traffic or soft shoulders. As we move along and I figure out the cruise control I am more daring, but still not able to pass anyone unless there is a passing lane.
The first day my two hours ends in Hamilton at lunch time. Yelp reviews speak well of Garlands, but this turns out to be a little blue trailer kitchen in an RV park, with nary so much as a picnic table to eat at. The fallback is Central Perk, a funky converted home with a wide veranda which would have been charming to sit on if the weather had not been in the 50’s and windy. They were out of soup, and the Veggie Panini was… interesting. Whole wheat bread grilled on one side, with eggplant, zucchini, bell pepper, and onion with a slice of Romano cheese. The cheese was melted, but the vegetables were raw. I’ve never had raw eggplant before, and hope not to ever again. but the rest was surprisingly good, with a copious salad of greens, a tomato, and honey mustard dressing. The wall held several certificates lauding CP as “best sandwiches in four counties” which considering where we were may very well have been true.
I’m always on the alert for reasons to stop along the way beyond simply natural necessities. Seymour, Texas, strategically located on the way between Archer City and Turkey, boasts the excellent Whiteside Museum of Natural History, with a Sound Garden across the street, in addition to the requisite gas stations. Two busloads of I’d judge third graders were also exploring the museum and the sound garden at the time we dropped in, but their chaperones kept them well in hand, and we dodged around the Pleistocene and Jurassic and other exhibits in avoidance. I’ve not seen a better T Rex simulacrum, the Triceratops skull was awesome, lots of other excellent taxidermy of currently thriving wildlife all around. The only complaint I have is regarding the sole, ridiculously expensive ($2.50) and very ugly post card available in the rudimentary gift shop.
From Turkey we headed east off across the boundless open high plains to Abilene. It seemed odd to see banners in this North Central Texas cattle capital, proclaiming it to be the “Storybook Capital of the World”, but in the downtown area a former commercial building across from the historic railroad station houses the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature Illustration, and a number of statues depicting storybook characters can be found on rooftops, on corners, and in parks around the downtown area. We lunched in the Storybook Garden down the street from the museum. next to a statue of the Lorax. The museum itself is fascinating, full of memories of stories I read to my kids as well as stories read to me.
Abilene also boasts of Frontier Texas! a history museum with modern interactive exhibits which also serves as the official Visitors Center for Abilene and the Texas Forts Trail Region. We did not stop here, nor did we take in The Grace Museum, an art museum featuring rotating exhibits of contemporary art and local history, located in a handsome re-purposed circa 1909 hotel in the historic downtown center of Abilene.
Abilene is doing its best to be Somewhere. It’s certainly worth a second stop, the next time we go west from Dallas.
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My debut novel, Fox Spirit, is appearing episode by episode on my sister blog, ajmccready.wordpress.com. New episodes arrive every Monday and Thursday. They’re short, so you’re not too late to check them out, and sign up for future happenings. Here’s a link to the first episode: http://ajmccready.wordpress.com/2023/02.
Turkey, Texas, has a population of 374 people, per the City Limits sign. However, it is conveniently located for access to both Cap Rock and Palo Duro Canyon State Parks , so we have reservations at the Hotel Turkey. In Turkey we find no reception whatsoever for internet, and W has no address for the Hotel. There is a boarded-up brick building that says “Hotel Turkey” on the front, and only after a circuit up and down the main (and only) street do we realize that the arrow intends us to go left behind the Main Street. There is the Hotel Turkey, which despite its antique furnishings, eccentric lighting and plumbing, and dearth of welcoming committee, seems to have carved a niche in the area as custodian of the legacy of “Bob Wills, King of Texas Swing”.
If you are not familiar with the name, as I was not, check out the link above.
Perhaps there is something about the wide open spaces in North Central Texas that is conducive to ambitious dreaming. How could this run-down circa 1920’s hotel on a side street in a town of less than 400 people possibly make sense?
But it’s working.
Behind the building itself are the three magic ingredients: an open air bar, a broad sheltered patio, plenty of open dirt space, and a simple wooden stage.
There are maybe 20 people gathered around the open air bar and patio in the back, and we are served a couple of Texas beers and some hot wings (sweet chili sauce and garlic-Parmesan sauce) with carrots and celery sticks and a caprese salad made with fresh mozzarella, variegated cherry tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, and LOTS of fresh basil as if it were lettuce. Yum. We could not finish more than half the wings and veggies. A friendly man comes over to talk to us about the local sights, the Hotel (that converted silo is the restrooms) and to welcome us to the area. Not sure if he was related to the owner, or just friendly, but it was pleasant.
The hotel has just one other room being used on a Monday night, and we are upgraded to a room with its own bath. (Fortunate, as when I checked out the hallway bathroom which our bargain room would have had us use, a sign on the toilet lid ordered DO NOT FLUSH ANYTHING DOWN THIS TOILET – PUT PAPER IN BASKET! .)
The rooms are furnished eclectically with furniture appropriate to the 1920’s and probably scavenged from prairie estate sales. Bare walls are decorated with a collection of Stetson hats, or, in the dining room, a collection of rainbow-painted old violins and vinyl LPs. The old-fashioned iron beds are so high that W has to call and ask for a step stool so she can get into hers. But the fan, lamp (once the defective one is replaced) and heat/cooling work well, and W luxuriates in the deep old-fashioned iron bathtub.
In the morning, we have the standard Texas “Hotel Breakfast” with eggs, bacon, sausage, buttered toast, and hash browns – all deliciously greasy. The cook doubles as host and entertainment. He tells us that the hotel is usually fully booked for the weekend, with live music on the outdoor stage which brings in 200 attendees on average. The previous weekend they had 400 people here for a concert with a well-regarded local Texas Swing band. It must have been a hoppin’ time for the bartender! He tells us that the owner/lady in charge has been working on the hotel for 7 years. I wish I had been able to talk with her to find out what dream drove her.
Returning from Palo Duro Canyoun, we had the Hotel Special dinner: a Chile Relleno Platter, with chips and salsa. This turned out to be a meat-stuffed chili, served with a beef enchilada, beans, and rice – all excellent and distinctively Tex-Mex.
After dinner the sky seemed to be clearing so I went out to see if the Milky Way was evident. It was not, though there was a lovely crescent moon, a glowing circle like a jeweled ring just below Venus. The town was quiet Quiet QUIET, as if there was nothing in the world to hear, until my footsteps set off a lone guardian dog.
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My debut novel, Fox Spirit, is appearing episode by episode on my sister blog, ajmccready.wordpress.com. New episodes arrive every Monday and Thursday. They’re short, so you’re not too late to check them out, and sign up for future happenings. Here’s a link to the first episode: http://ajmccready.wordpress.com/2023/02.
If you are going to visit these two Texas State Parks, it’s best to do Cap Rock first. It’s a thumbnail introduction to the geology underlying both parks, with a Visitor’s Center that explains everything clearly. (It’s called “Cap Rock” because the topmost layer of rock is more weather resistant than lower layers, so you have formations where the top layer sits like a cap on top of flimsier-looking lower remnants. If you’ve been to Bryce Canyon in Utah, you’ve seen this before.) The main road in Cap Rock State Park is an out-and-back drive, about one and a half hours with some stops for wildlife photos and other breaks. There are informative placards to alert you to the geology, so when you visit Palo Duro, you’ll be all set to appreciate it.
Here’s a winning trivia question for you: what is the SECOND deepest canyon in the United States? No, it’s not the Black Canyon of the Gunnison (though that Colorado park has the coolest name). It’s little-known Palo Duro Canyon.
Palo Duro Canyon has the same geology as Cap Rock but more spectacular. There are some great-looking back-country trails, but W was not able to hike, and I had neither sunscreen, broad-brimmed hat, walking stick, or inclination to hike by myself, so we drove the curvy loop road from the rim of the canyon to the bottom, stopping at viewpoints and picnicking on kippers and saltines and mandarins. There are two visitor’s centers, at convenient intervals for potty breaks, and the loop road gives some wonderful vistas.
We were told that there is a herd of Aoudad sheep which was originally imported from Africa to hybridize with US breeds in the hope of creating a hardy sheep which was adapted to the arid terrain. The hybridization scheme did not work, but the Aoudads have proliferated and in some parts of Texas are hunted, although they are protected in the state parks. None of the Aoudads were visible from the road, but here’s what they look like, if you are planning on taking advantage of the back-country trails on your visit.
But where does one stay on the Other Side of Nowhere? The answer may surprise you – it certainly did surprise me!
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My debut novel, Fox Spirit, is appearing episode by episode on my sister blog, ajmccready.wordpress.com. New episodes arrive every Monday and Thursday. They’re short, so you’re not too late to check them out, and sign up for future happenings. Here’s a link to the first episode: http://ajmccready.wordpress.com/2023/02.
We arrive at Archer City. Our aim, to visit Larry McMurtry’s famous Booked Up bookstore, is thwarted. But all of McMurtry’s bookstores are closed. What to do?
First, the Spur Hotel is charming, quaintly furnished in a mixture of Victorian and Texan. The cozy den off the lobby boasts deep armchairs, a massive fireplace, and an interesting selection of Texas-focused books and magazines, plus a shelf of board games and picture puzzles. The lobby also has an entire wall of borrowable books, a great many written by Larry McMurtry of course.
Where can we have dinner? The friendly hostess offers us two choices: Lucky’s Cafe next to the [Gas Station minimarket a few blocks down in one direction, or Larry McMurtry’s favorite, the Dairy Queen at the edge of town in the other direction.
We opt for Lucky’s Cafe, accessible through the mini mart by the gas station. A counter freezer cabinet offers a variety of ice cream treats, a chalkboard offers the special of the day (beef tamales) , soup of the day (chicken vegetable) , and vegetable side of the day (green beans). Drinks and utensils available from the self-service counter. Seat yourself at whatever formica-topped table you wish.
The special of the day gave us each chips, salsa, a non-alcoholic beverage, three small beef tamales in an excellent sauce, spicy rice and retried beans for $12 apiece plus tip. We may not find adventure here, but we won’t go broke either.
The next morning, after a very quiet night’s sleep, we mosey across the street to Murn’s Cafe, another McMurtry favorite. Another bare-bones spot with formica tables, flourescent lights, plastic chairs, and friendly service. And another cholesterol-laden meal. A basic breakfast at Murn’s Cafe includes a bottomless cup of coffee, 2 fried eggs, bacon, hash browns, and grilled biscuit. Fortunately we had each eaten a mandarin orange with our morning tea so we could claim a little acid to cut the fat. Of course it was delicious.
Well fortified, we set off to explore. First stop, the Walsh Park welcome to Archer City, a brief history of the town carved into wrought iron plaques next to the former Mobil gas station, now a Visitors Center open only on weekends. Next, the Library with its own plaque outside honoring Larry McMurtry, and a very interesting collection of books inside. A very helpful librarian showed W to the “Trails of Archer City’ referred to in the Walsh Park wrought iron info sheet. I found two Georgette Heyer mysteries (my secret vice) which I had never read before on the free giveaway shelf.
After the quality time in the library, we strolled down to the Miller Marketplace, a hangover from the tourist days, full of craft items, old curios and knickknacks, vintage and not-so-vintage hats and clothing. W and I each bought an Archer City commemorative T shirt, available only in odd sizes now. Fortunately, the two of us fit in odd sizes.
I had read an article about Larry McMurtry’s Big House in the Architectural Digest. Naturally, we were eager to see it, and the article obligingly gave us the location next to the Archer County Country Club. We cruise past, wondering what happened to the 140,000 books which McMurtry kept for himself in the Big House rather than consigning them to the stores. /\
It being a lovely day, we took a “nature trail” from Burkett Park to Archer City Lake Park, then went for a drive along the dam which created the lake.
Lunch was sardines and saltines at a picnic table in the park; dinner was hamburgers and soft ice cream at the Dairy Queen (a favorite hangout of LMcM), which included a spectacular sunset/cloud display, horizon to horizon. The next morning as we left Archer City we passed the old courthouse, with its team of convicts doing yardwork. No, not much has changed after all in Archer City.
My debut novel, Fox Spirit, is appearing episode by episode on my sister blog, ajmccready.wordpress.com. New episodes arrive every Monday and Thursday. They’re short, so you’re not too late to check them out, and sign up for future happenings. Here’s a link to the first episode: http://ajmccready.wordpress.com/2023/02.
Being fans of Larry McMurtry since “Lonesome Dove” and “Terms of Endearment”, my friend W and I were eager to visit his Book City in North Central Texas, although we knew that since his death in 2021 the huge collection of antiquarian books for sale in his home town of Archer Cit had been scaled back.
In Georgetown, waiting for W to pick me up for the start of our North Central Texas adventure, I am on the internet. I happen on a story about Larry McMurtry’s memorabilia being up for auction, which mentions casually that his bookstore is closed. I google around and find that Booked Up is “Temporarily Closed.” A further exploration reveals that Booked Up is now operating solely online, and the properties in Archer City have been sold to Chip Gaines, a Texas media personality who specializes in renovations of “fixer-uppers.” What would be left of Larry McMurtry’s dream?
We drive north west under an amazing sky of clouds that look like rolls of cotton batting spread out like fat fingers across the sky and the horizon visible in every direction, and arrive at Archer City.
It must have been a small miracle for the town when Larry McMurtry came back home and began throwing money into rejuvenating the place with his dream book store. And then the Black Swan – Amazon – came along and sucked all the life out of the business. Why travel to the other side of Nowhere when you could order the book shipped to you online?
The commemorative T-shirt above sells the original vision – The picturesque sandstone Courthouse, with its matching jail converted into a County Museum, the Booked Up storefront, Royal Theatre marquee, and “Home of Larry McMurtry” prominently featured,
The first impression of Archer City is like imagining what Brigadoon was like after the magic spell was broken. All of McMurtry’s bookstores are closed, The Lonesome Dove B&B, converted from a former hospital building, has closed. The iconic Royal Theatre which was featured in the classic film “Last Picture Show” has had its marquee restored, and its neon sign still glows, but walking around the corner reveals that it is a hollow shell. The plan to turn the old jail into an atmospheric County Museum has been shelved, the site surrounded by a cyclone fence, and the place has pretty near returned to its post-oil pre-McMurtry status.
Coming next: What to do in Archer City now that the bookstore is closed.
Larry McMurtry had a dream. He had had considerable success as an author and screenwriter, and he had a renowned antiquarian book store, Booked Up, in Virginia, near Washington DC. But “the sky in Virginia is too small.” McMurtry was lonesome for the endless horizons of North Texas, where he grew up in the small (pop. 1200) ranching town of Archer City. He dreamed of creating a marvelous bookshop there, the kind of store that booklovers would come to as a destination, no matter how out of the way.
And then lightning struck, in the form of a blockbuster novel, “Lonesome Dove,” which was made into a hit TV series, and was followed by several nearly – as-successful book and TV sequels. McMurtry had all the money he needed to make his dream real. He went back to Archer City and purchased what had been an oil well equipment repair shop, a former Ace hardware store, and two other buildings with ample warehouse space behind. He labeled each building Booked Up #1, #2, #3, and #4, established that each would specialize in particular kinds of books (literature, History, biography, travel, etc.) and brought in an inventory of over 400,000 books.
For a while the dream sparkled. Archer City had originally been a ranching town, then enjyed a brief oil boom which killed off most of the ranching, and now it seemed that Booked Up might revive it once more as a tourist center. The old Spur Hotel was refurbished, a vintage house near the center of town became a B & B called the Lonesome Dove, the old Mobil gas station became a Visitor’s Information Center, and the community planned to repurpose the old County Jail as a County Museum.
Then two unfortunate and unforeseen events happened: The first was the black swan which upended the bookseller business: the Internet, with online bookstores like Ex Libris and Amazon. The second: McMurtry had a heart attack. The two events convinced McMurtry that instead of leaving his heirs a golden legacy in the form of Booked Up, the store was more likely to be an albatross around their necks. He decided to sell off much of the inventory. After the sale, 150,000 books remained in the former Ace Hardware building, Booked Up #1.
And then the third blow: Larry McMurtry died.
He left the remaining inventory, plus the four properties, to the woman who had been running the bookstore for him. Could one storefront alone maintain the cachet that McMurtry had provided? W and I, both of us fans of used bookstores and McMurtry, decide to go find out.
(To Be Continued)
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My debut novel, Fox Spirit, is appearing episode by episode on my sister blog, ajmccready.wordpress.com. New episodes arrive every Monday and Thursday. They’re short, so you’re not too late to check them out, and sign up for future happenings. Here’s a link to the first episode: http://ajmccready.wordpress.com/2023/02.
Despite the stereotype of Texas being more hospitable to pickup trucks than to pedestrians, I found some good trail walking in suburban Georgetown. Not far from the residential area where my brother lives with his family is Lake Georgetown, and a well maintained trail travels from several access points to the lake.
The trail winds through wooded green space, cuts under a sculptural freeway overpass, and continues past the dam which forms the reservoir onto a circular trail that winds either through the adjacent park or, for the more ambitious, all the way around the lake.
My brother’s neighborhood also features a hidden trail which winds along a branch of the San Gabriel River behind homes mostly facing the other way. Being a guest, I grabbed my walking stick and ignored the “PRIVATE TRAIL, NO PUBLIC ACCESS” sign at the head. Almost immediately I blundered onto a herd of four deer, almostt completely camouflaged by trees and shadow. Georgetown was still recovering from a massive ice storm in February of this year which had de-branched or toppled many trees in the area. I detoured around several fallen trees, and walked carefully across assorted stepping stone bridges, counting lupine and wild pea and dandelion and paintbrush and other recognized and non-familiar flora. I finally stopped by a dainty pink and yellow columbine growing amid the branches of a fallen tree that blocked further passage. I didn’t get quite as far as the end of the path which I had set as a goal, but as I returned I encountered another larger herd of deer plus my nephew coming to find me. Very nice (both).
My debut novel, Fox Spirit, is appearing episode by episode on my sister blog, ajmccready.wordpress.com. New episodes arrive every Monday and Thursday. They’re short, so you’re not too late to check them out, and sign up for future happenings. Here’s the link to the first episode: http://ajmccready.wordpress.com/2023/02
What do you do on a cold damp day in Georgetown, Texas? Go to a warm damp cave.
Inner Space Cavern is an attraction just outside of Georgetown, discovered back in 1963 when the road smiths were drilling for the supports of the I-35 highway overpass. I tried to imagine the reaction of the road crew when, after drilling through forty feet of limestone, the drill suddenly dropped another thirty feet unimpeded. I also tried to imagine the courage of the drill operator who rode the drill bit down a two-foot-wide shaft into the darkness below, not knowing what might greet him.
What greeted him was a pile of fossilized bat guano, and a spacious room sparkling with salt-encrusted stalagtites and stalagmites. The highway crews decided that thirty feet of granite was deep enough to anchor the pillars supporting the overpass, and the building of Interstate 35 proceeded according to precedent.
There was no obvious entrance to the cavern. The bats had gotten in through a sinkhole that had since filled itself in. But word of the underground palace got out, and within three years an access was created and the cavern was open to the public.
Inner Space Cavern now attracts thousands of visitors annually, and if your youngsters chafe at waiting for your alloted tour time (backlog can be over two hours on a busy weekend), outdoor activities include a small playground, picnic tables, some exotic animals to watch and a zip line.
On last Saturday of spring Break, a whole bunch of other people had the same idea as we did. We bought tickets for the 4:20 tour at 2pm, watched our token teenager shivering on the Sabre tooth zip line (Brrrr! it was a cold March day!), went back to the house for snacks and an hour of March Madness, and then returned to the cavern for a one mile, one and a half hour tour. “There are thirty feet of solid rock above us” assured the guide. Bats had returned to the cavern as soon as it became accessible, and they are treated as an added attraction, with postcards available in the gift shop of and a video extolling the virtues of bats running non-stop in the waiting lobby.
“Don’t worry,” said the guide. “The bats are asleep and probably won’t poop on you.”
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If you show up in the morning and are faced with a two hour delay before your tour is called, you could do worse than go for brunch or lunch at BiG (Brookwood in Georgetown) a restaurant/gift shop staffed by “adults with special needs” who cook deliciously and craft lovely items for sale in the adjacent gift shop. The website does not show the brunch menu, but I can vouch for the avocado toast with fruit cup, and my friend’s spinach/mushroom quiche also looked seductive.
Allyson Johnson 