After an adventure out to Big Bend both amazing and exhausting, I was finally headed back toward Austin. I was tired and exciting to sleep on a real bed and take a real shower once again. The drive back, all 6 hours of it, seemed an impossibly long time, especially since on the way there we had all the splendor of Big Bend awaiting us and the way back had no such appeal. In order to cure some carsickness and end-of-vacation blues, we took a detour on a small country road called the Willow City Loop just before Fredericksburg.
The Loop seemed more or less like a long driveway connecting one ranch to the next to the next. Cows and goats ambled lazily alongside the road and more than once we had to swerve to narrowly avoid hitting an aptly-named roadrunner. But what had really brought us along this detour was the wildflowers. Undisturbed on this quiet ranch road, vibrant purples, red and yellow beamed at us from all sides. Of all of these, my favorite by far was the Indian Paintbrush with its bright red color and small trumpet-shaped leaves. I was familiar with most of the other wildflowers, but these were a new sight for me. We stopped at the apex of a hill and all got out to stretch our travel-weary legs, only to find a multitude of crimson paintbrushes spread out before us. It was sad to see our trip come to an end, but the paintbrushes were a gentle reminder that wild beauty is never far if you know where to look and how to slow down to appreciate it.
iNaturalist Link: http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/5977530