Watch Where You Step

I gave you guys a break for a few days.  I was camping without internet access for the weekend.  I could have gone to McDonald's or Starbucks, but I was having fun with friends in the real world.

Bayou City Outdoors did a series of Hill Country events for the Memorial Day Weekend.  You know it was a guy who picked the campground - we were camped out in a pasture.  I knew it was a ranch, but I didn't realize we were going to be in the same field as the cows.  Click to enlarge the below photo and you can see exactly how close they were.

I awoke to the sound of mooing and a strange call I soon realized was coming from the BULLS.  There were two of them coming straight towards our tents - dehorned, but still very large and scary.  I told one of the guys to go stop them from coming this way.  I was only kidding, but he did it!  He walked over to the bulls and immediately the two of them started fighting.  The cows came over to watch.  It reminded me of the school yard, with the kids yelling, "Fight!  Fight!"

There were a couple of dogs that were hanging out at the ranch and decided to adopt us for the weekend.  That's R and one of them pictured above.  When R started encouraging the cattle to move farther away from our camp, she immediately ran out to help.  She actually sent them in the correct direction and only chased them when we were trying to shoo them.  Smart puppy!  We decided if she was going to herd the cattle, she could stay.

She did a good job.  The cattle spent a lot of time standing around and staring at us.  I think we stole their favorite shade trees and all those spots void of grass where we liked to pitch our tents were their beds.  They were probably wondering why they could fit an entire herd under those trees and six skinny humans couldn't share.

There were also a couple of horses that occasionally came whinneying and running through camp.  One of them decided to take a dust bath.  The dog spotted the horse with all four legs in the air, rolling around on the ground and decided she wanted to play, too.  The horse wanted no part of it.  He reared up, kicked at the air, and our canine friend took the hint.        

We used the ranch, near Llano, as a base camp while we did some wine-tasting at the vineyards outside of Fredericksburg and visited a couple of state parks.  I hope everyone had fun this holiday weekend.