Feb 12, 2025–I must admit to a feeling of guilt that I have never visited the great museums and cathedrals of Europe. I have not gone on safari in Africa, nor ridden on the Orient Express. I haven’t waddled with penguins in Antarctica nor left REI gear on the slopes of Mt. Everest.
Yet I feel more guilty that I don’t regret not checking off the top ten items on every normal human being’s travel bucket list. Part of me wonders why many of us feel it requires traveling through 12 time zones for something to count as an adventure?
When I sit at a light on Main Street in Fredericksburg, I marvel at all the pedestrians that traveled great distances to visit this admittedly worthy destination in the Texas Hill Country.
Quickly synthesizing the two thoughts, it struck me that I could enjoy the thrill of studying and admiring the world’s wonders, without leaving home. What if, I asked as I sat through the second red light, we were visitors in our own towns?
So that’s what I am doing on weekends. For the purposes of this column, I’m using Fredericksburg. But readers can easily do the same thing in Kerrville, Boerne, Bandera, or Dime Box, for that matter. Every town contains treasures, often hiding in plain site.
In Fredericksburg, I started with the Catholic church. While strolling past it one day, I just stopped at looked up at it. I admired the flying buttresses, the soaring steeple, the grand entry doors. Inside, the columns and stained glass make you feel like you could be in a small town in Germany, which is not far off the mark. Next door, the original Marienkirche is less ostentatious, but wonderful in its own primitive way and linked to a relatively recent past.
I then spent a First Saturday at the Pioneer Museum. Accompanied by my 9-year-old grand, we took in the grounds, on this day populated with re-enactors demonstrating campfire cooking, weaving, and blacksmithing. She was especially taken with the small log cabins and Sunday Houses, imagining what it would be like to be raised in house with only two rooms.
(I questioned why the pioneers built homes with two rooms, while building outhouses with two holes. How was that supposed to work?)
We went on to do the whole tour, walking inside the jail, with its grim cells and stark fixtures; the Vereins Kirche, now a museum of the town’s history; and Schandua House, furnished as if the original owners could walk in and start making Kochkäse and spinning mohair.
I won’t make this a walking tour of Fredericksburg (I wrote a book on that), but I challenge you to look–really look–at the town where you live. See it as if it is your first visit there. If that is hard to do, let me give you a tip: Look up.
I don’t think we realize how often we look down as we go about our business, whether walking, driving, or riding a bike. Most of our attention is focused on the three feet ahead of us, because we are always navigating, always “going somewhere.” Proof? Next time you travel in your Ford Focus, let someone else drive. Your job is to look out the windows. It’s amazing what you don’t see on your daily commute. By riding shotgun, I saw homesteads and scenery I had never noticed in 40 years of following the same route. I looked up higher and become amazed again at the lovely hills surrounding our communities. I’d forgotten to notice them.
In Kerrville we’re always driving across the river, but often forget that it is there. In Blanco, while eating at a café, I discovered the town’s original blockhouse jail was out back in the courtyard. In Bandera, you are actually in the Wild West. Johnson City is a destination of its own, if for nothing else than in following the former president’s footsteps.
So try it. Look up. Look around. And tonight, sleep in your own bed.
Guilt free.
XXX
Phil Houseal sleeps in his own bed at Full House PR.