A Countryside Run Around Fredericksburg 5/5/2010

Well Happy Cinco de Mayo to everybody. This morning we headed off for another ride in the Texas Hill Country and beautiful country it is. Seems as though the Texans like to build their homes on top of the highest hill around and some of them are simply gorgeous and big as hell. We did 14 caches today and we can't really say we saw anything interesting or with any history associated with it. We did 5 or 6 caches along the Pedernales River most of them in the either in the woods or along the river bank. We found 5 caches that were on fences either along the road or along people's property. The people down here are big on fences and almost every house, no matter how big or how small has a fence around it. We still haven't seen a big ranch yet as they are set so far back from the road you can't see them unless you go onto the property and all of them have fences and huge fancy gates around them.

One nice cache we did was a multi-cache in Marketplatz Square, the town park in the center of town, that had to do with eith a Maibaum. The center of every town in Bavaria is the Maibaum or Maypole. The blue-and-white striped pole is decorated with the symbol of every trade and guild represented in the town, and is designed to help visitors determine what services are available there. The effort and skill required to build one is a source of community pride.
The tradition dates back to the 16th century, and is a governed by a strict set of rules. Great care is taken in selecting and cutting the tree, which must be at least 30 meters (98 feet) long. Once completed, it cannot be erected before May 1. In the meantime, tradition and honor dictate that men from surrounding towns attempt to steal the pole and ransom it for beer and food, so it must be guarded 24 hours a day. Once the pole goes up, with quite a bit of leveraging and manual labor, it cannot be stolen and may only stand for three years.
They have a Maibaum in the square in Fredericksburg and we had to find it and identify the objects on top and then find the cache. One was also in a very very small cemetery named the Hartman Family Cemetery just off the road behind a fence where we were watched by a herd of goats. Another was behind a tree located near a the historical marker Guenther's Live Oak Mill - By 1848, Carl Hilmar Guenther (1826-1902), master millwright, had completed his apprenticeship in Germany and immigrated to the U.S. In search of opportunities and a good grist mill site, he journeyed south from Wisconsin to New Orleans, and then west to Texas. In 1851 he bought land and water rights on Live Oak Creek near Fredericksburg. After six months of construction, his mill was operational, but a flood destroyed the first dam. One month after the floor the mill was working again. Ox drawn wagons loaded with harvested crops converged on the mill in the mornings, and after the farmers' business was completed the men remained to visit with each other. The mill became a center of social life in the Hill Country community Guenther was granted U.S. Citizenship in gillespie County in 1854. He married Dorothea Pape in 1855. They lived in a home near the mill and were eventually the parents of seven children. In 1859 Guenther chose a site about one mile from the center of San antonio as a new site for his mill operation. Guenther mills soon became the Pioneer Flour Mills, an enterprise which became a flourishing business in Texas and the Southwest. The rest of our caches were either in the woods or in a tree along the country roads.

Before we found our last cache we stopped in a shady spot and had lunch and then were off again. Once we found the last cache it was off back to the coach for the day and keeping cool. Well until tomorrow we love and miss you all. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick