The travelogue continues. For previous entries Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

South of Burnet is Marble Falls. One of the most beautiful towns in central Texas--rocky hills and a lake--with some of the worst traffic in Texas, apparently because getting anywhere in town means using U.S. 281, putting the locals and those just passing through onto the same pavement. The lake resulted from the damming of the Colorado River (of Texas), which covered the Falls that had given the city its name. Can't have everything. Perhaps the town best should be known as having elected the first woman mayor in the United States in 1917 when the voters were all men.

The small community of Round Mountain is off the highway, but along 281 is a truckstop that a sign proclaims to be municipally owned. While I don't think that the Federal Government owning GM or Chrysler is a good idea, I'm OK with communities choosing to operate businesses within the larger structure of regulated Capitalism.

Above the Pedernales River sits Johnson City, hometown of Lyndon Baines Johnson. The town was named for a relative of LBJ, one James Polk Johnson. The LBJ boyhood home is now an historic site maintained by the National Park Service. It was a Texas-sized ambition of LBJ's to eliminate poverty in the U.S. The Great Society did not turn out as planned, and probably could not have under any circumstance. Dependency on the Federal government, like any dependency, tends toward dystopia, no matter how noble the initial vision.

The next town south is Blanco, along the Blanco River. To the traveler, the town looks like a tourist jumping-off point for fun in the Hill Country, especially tubing the rivers.

San Antonio. Germans, Hispanics, the Alamo, the Riverwalk, the Spurs. And Trinity University, the goal of our trip, to see our youngest graduate (with honors I might add). A fun town. A big city. And I can't help but wonder how its residents will have enough water in the 21st century. San Antonio is perhaps the easternmost of the major cities in the U.S. such as Phoenix, where population growth seems destined to outrun the water supply. We Americans have operated on the assumption that we can always bend nature to our desires through our technology. The Greeks had a word for this attitude--hubris. Every so often the Mississippi, or a hurricane, reminds us 'tain't necessarily so. Drinking water may be our future lesson in humility.