Weekend re-cap - Historical Road Rally losers

*Technically, this happened during the week, and it so happens we didn't do much the following weekend, so I'm counting it for my re-cap...*
One of the wineries we enjoy visiting had an event planned for July 4th that sounded like fun to me.  I convinced Hubby to go, since the boys were going to be otherwise occupied.  In hindsight, I realize how flawed the whole plan was...

 We started out early so we could stop halfway and eat breakfast.

In Lampasas we ate at the Country Kitchen - a diner style restaurant serving basic breakfast grub.  It wasn't super cheap, but there was a LOT of food and we left thinking we could probably make it to lunch, putting it mildly.  The service was distracted and haphazard - we will likely not eat here again.

 Chicken fried steak is my latest craving.  And grits with butter cannot be beat!

 The trip to Hamilton from Lampasas is about an hour through some pretty Texas countryside.

 And we arrived at the winery early, but it gave us time to review the plan:

Get a map.  Plan on the drive time to be around 2 hours.  The rally will start at Red Wing Dove, continue to Fiesta Winery where you get a 15 minute pitstop and must buy a glass of wine for the navigator.  Find and document historical markers and sites along the way.  When you return to Red Wing Dove, grilled burgers and a glass of wine will be served.  You need one driver, one navigator, and photo proof that you found all of the sites (9).  The winner gets a bottle of wine and the title of Road Rally Champion.

We hung out at RWD for a little while, working on a puzzle until all the participants arrived and were assigned a departure time.  We were the first there, so first to leave.  We had Google map going and were figuring out the clue map along the way - it wasn't labeled, so you had to figure out what blue dot on the map represented what landmark and find it. That should have been the first clue that this was going to be challenging.

First stop - a cemetery.  A bad omen...

 

 San Saba Peak marker, Dam and Well marker in Goldtwaite.

We found every one of them, though we were sorely tempted to give up before we were done. We have zero knowledge of the area highways and byways, giving us a distinct disadvantage.  

At Fiesta, we ran into a road rally couple who had decided to just quit and were leisurely enjoying their wine, instead of gulping it in 15 minutes like we did.  In hindsight, I wish we had done the same. {and not just because that was an expensive winery}

The skies were looking ominous, but we were only halfway done and it was getting to be past the 2 hour time estimate.  We only got turned around once, for about 10 minutes - but it felt like we had entered a time warp.  I blinked, looked a the clock again, and it was 3 p.m. And we had three more sites to find...

The Shive, Texas marker and the Atherton School marker. 

We were so focused on getting the photo proof that we didn't get to read a single sign or learn anything of historical value.  It became a race to find that marker, get the pic, jump into the truck, and race off to the next.  Many bad words were said.

Schoelten Railroad marker

We didn't arrive back at the winery until 4:10 p.m.  We were the last ones to make it back.  No one even asked to see our pics so who could know whether we found every marker or not.  We ate a hastily (read: rare) grilled burger, paid our tab, and drove back 2 hours without stopping so we could be home in time to fix grilled hotdogs* for Scout, Dutch, and Firstborn. It was raining by then which was just as well - no one was in the mood to fight crowds to see fireworks.  And although it was no one's fault but our own, we decided not to revisit Hamilton for a while - the whole road rally thing was a good idea on paper, but I wish we had done something different with our holiday. 

*Our July 4th menu: Grilled Dogs, crockpot carmelized onions, Ranch Bacon Pasta Salad, chips, melon, and sangria!  I had most of it fixed in advance.  Thank goodness.  (: