P.C. Shannon

I had an absolute wonderful time with Caroline on Sunday (see our lovely self-portrait). We took a daytrip out to the hill country and Fredericksburg. Ostensibly it was a quest for peaches, but really it was an excuse to get out of town for an afternoon.

Nothing terribly noteworthy happened. We stopped in a handful of quaint little farm stores that each sold all manner of preserves, jams, and salsas. It turns out that you can buy peach cobbler in a jar and that peaches-and-jalapenos really is a good flavor combination. We had lunch at an herb garden where we were served glasses of water with a rosebud. Afterwards, we had ice cream and toured the shops on Main Street.

Fredericksburg is filled with German heritage. Main Street, also known as Hauptstrasse, has the oldest brewery in the state, and you can walk down the street drinking a pint.

It felt a little strange, a little bourgeois to be touring the shops. I can remember a few years back when I drove through Fredericksburg regularly on my way to hiking at Enchanted Rock. I regarded the tourists at the shops not quite contemptuously but certainly as being removed or apart from where I was. I guess I’m in a different place now.

I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I had a truly fantastic time with my wife, even though nothing really happened. It was really something we needed, too, as we creep up on our first anniversary and after all the ups and downs of the past year. It’s odd that so much nothing can mean so much, but it does. Our little daytrip strengthened our relationship and brought us closer together. Things are slowly, surely starting to look better on all fronts.