Free white bread

We escaped the madness of San Antonio and ran for the Texas Hill Country, hoping to explore the local German settled towns and pull on some pink exposed granite outcroppings at Enchanted Rock State Recreation Area. Apparently Bush Buracracy has spilled over into the Texas Recreation system, as it cost us $27 to camp for a night at Enchanted Rock, after handing over $15 for camping and $12(!) for a day use fee. The small area was beautiful and quite magical actually, as it resembled a pink-granite version of Joshua Tree's larger domes. The Native Americans believed these rocks to be enchanted due to their mystical color and strange, ominous sounds coming from deep within. They figured that spirits of the dead were wailing from inside the granite walls, while modern scientists believe the strange noises to come from expansion and contraction of the rock due to fluctuations in temperature. While we didn't actually hear any noises stranger than the all-night partying of the high school students next to us, we figure the real source is probably some mixture of both.

Driven away by rain and misty weather, we left the park but couldn't leave central Texas without going to Bush's favorite BBQ joint in nearby Llano. Texas Barbecue is a phenomenon that one really has to experience themselves to fully enjoy, but needless to say it was about as far away from our vegetarian days as we could possibly come, even further than eating the raw beef and wild boar pate in France. Outside of Cooper's BBQ lay 7 gigantic open pit barbecues, where you choose what meat you want and a cowboy spears it out of the grill for you. The possibilities were dazzling and included pretty much every part of a pig or cow that you would want to eat. We soon learned that our intimidation was a bit unfounded, as the only vocabulary needed to communicate with the cowboy attendant was answers to his questions "What else?" and "Sauce?".

He gave us our meat (beef ribs, brisket, and pork sausage) on a red plastic tray and we headed inside. Here we perused the vegetable buffet while they weighed, priced, and sliced our meat. The vegetable options were not quite as overwhelming as the meat, and we were forced to choose between corn, potato salad, cole slaw, pickles, and apple cobler. Feeling that the cole slaw and pickles were a pretty safe bet, we paid for our wares and headed to the long, picnic style tables full of paper towels, ketchup, mustard, and yes, free white bread. The fact that we were the only ones in the place not wearing full deer-hunting camo regalia or drooling over the huge mounted buck heads on the wall verified that this was indeed a local's establishment.

Yes, Llano is in fact the deer-hunting capital of Texas, and it seems that if you want to barbecue some meat, Cooper's method is a pretty good way to do it. It's hard to travel through this part of the country and forget that it's Bush country, as evidenced by the framed, signed letter on the wall declaring Cooper's as a "mighty fine barbecue establishment". In fact, it seems that if your store or restaurant is worth its weight in salt around here, you better have a letter from one of the Georges or at least Laura hanging on your wall. To be honest, the first lady seems to get around even a bit more than the President, which might be explained by all the time he must spend deer hunting or eating at Cooper's.

On the way out of town we were flagged down by yet another confused German who couldn't figure out why we had a German Wolfsberg license plate on the front of our Eurovan. We didn't ask him how he knew it was our van, whether it was our lack of camouflage clothing or the absence of a permenantly mounted cattle/deer guard on the front like all the other local cars. He was friendly, albeit disappointed, when we explained that it was just a novelty plate there for decoration. A stop at an old cowboy-hippie run bookstore that would have been at home on Telegraph Ave yielded some cheap and interesting books, including a Scrabble dictionary sure to increase nightly competition. Our time was through in Llano, and we hit the road heading West towards El Paso, our bellies full of beef.