Bandera

 From Seguin we drove North West to Bandera, the Texas hill country.

Along a loud stretch of rode.

with intersting food choices. Puffy Taco's? What's a Puffy Taco? 

It seems towns like to call themselves the “Cowboy Capitol of the World”. Bandera, from our experience has come the closest to the truth of the title. The town attracts snowbirds and summer travelers. The dude and guest ranches keep the economy booming. In the good ol'days, Bandera was a stop for cowboy’s driving cattle up the Chisolm trial.  

We booked 2 day’s at Rancho Cortez, a dude ranch and fitness camp. This is the slow season for the area, and we were the only ones there for the dude ranch. There were two other people there for the fitness camp. One gentleman has been there for 9 weeks and lost 78 pounds. Impressive. All we lost was a sense of time and feeling in our backsides.

We hung out with the owner Larry, who gave us lessons in the arena, took us out to feed cattle and sang silly songs with us at the campfire.  Chris the ranch hand, led us on hour long trail rides. Jose, the cook, served up delicious cowboy meals, but for yours truly,  the non- beef/chicken eater, it was the fitness food. Beautiful, colorful scrumptious food.

Little Miss spent much of her free moments in the goat pen.

but her favorite, was riding Biggin'.

And Biggin' loved Little Miss

Cowboy in training

Trail riding

Saddle Class

Larry told us to hop in the back of the pick up, we were driving out to feed the cows. As we came through the gate, Larry started honking his horn and this mad rush of cattle comes running, Big monsterous horns and all.