New Braunfels, Texas WURSTFEST!

It's the best of the wurst. My wife and I have been out of town. That's why this blog has been inactive-- more inactive than usual. We visited New Braunfels, Texas and spent a little time sight-seeing there and sampling the Wurstfest. We rented a car and drove. What a drive! Speed limits are way up, like 75 to 80 mph. Truck traffic is heavy, too, thanks to the recent oil boom in this state. Ditto for campers and big RVs. Every town we passed through, going south, seems to be getting at least a little more prosperous. The only notable exceptions seem to be Lamesa and Tahoka, a couple of towns not far from Lubbock. They seem as dead as ever. One thing I can tell you, there is a population explosion in the hill country. We hit bumper-to-bumper traffic between New Braunfels and Boerne. The situation there is untenable. They've outgrown their water resources and no matter how much it rains (and they've had flooding recently), drought conditions prevail every summer. Developers are pretty much destroying that part of the Texas hill country. I would not live there if you paid me. It's already too congested, and it will get much worse until the collapse sets in. One thing that bothers me is that the Edwards Aquifer recharges and discharges very quickly. It is very porous and all the crap and pollution from surface run-off, which increases as the building boom goes on, with so many gas stations and vehicles and light industry, washes right into the aquifer. You are going to have illegal dumping of toxic waste. You are going to have oil spills. You are going to have more and more herbicides and pesticides in use on all those lawns, and ALL of that crap will be carried by the first heavy rain right into the aquifer. You can't keep it out. That limestone aquifer is also vulnerable to acidification and sinkhole formation. At any rate, I'm going to keep to my usual practice of posting black and white pics first, then the enhanced color, then the plain snapshots. Most of these photos were taken either at Wurstfest or in downtown New Braunfels. And they don't show the usual stuff most people like to photograph...

There will be much more to come.