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Vacation Time!

Writer's picture: Debra HoltDebra Holt

July 28, 2018

The good thing about a vacation is when your bags are packed, and you are in the car headed down the road to your fun and hopefully, relaxing destination. The bad thing about a vacation… it never lasts. And soon you and your bags full of dirty laundry are headed back to the real world of housecleaning and jobs. We are home again. But I get to relive the good times as I share with you my whirlwind, ‘working’ author’s vacation.

This was a time to renew and rejuvenate and re-start the brain to focus on the writing. With the launch of my latest series next week, The Sisters of the Yellow Rose, I have to get moving on books #2 and #3! Plus, I have a new Christmas book that just won’t allow me to ignore it and is midway to completion.

Where does this writer begin? I head to the heart of the Texas hill country… Kerrville, Texas. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the area, it is the area between Kerrville, Fredericksburg, and Marble Falls where my two series are set in my fictional towns of McKenna Springs and Bluebonnet Falls. And as many years as I have lived around and grown up with this area, I still discover treasures… and more places and composites of interesting characters to add to ‘my’ towns.

The best discovery of this trip? The Hill Country Café… a small hometown café that has been serving great food for four-plus decades. It’s the diner where everyone knows everyone coming in the door and if you happen in as a stranger, well you won’t stay a stranger for long. The food is real… fresh, down-home menu with the BEST chicken fried steak and cream gravy I have eaten. And don’t even get me started on the massive meringue pies made from scratch.

I’m going to let photos do my talking for me for a while here:

Part of the visit to Kerrville is the beautiful The King is Coming Prayer Garden which is magnificent and overlooks the valley and the city from a high hill. The sunrises and sunsets are not to be missed and the peace found there is something I cannot describe… please stop and sit a while if you have the chance. I was able to capture a sunrise on the hill and a sunset.

The rivers in the area are ice-cold and great places to sit in a lawn chair in the middle of their shallows or float along on a tube through the deep canyons while you leave all thoughts of anything else behind you.

Sad day when we left the hill country and headed to Waco. For me, it was a chance to visit the Texas Ranger Museum. For my husband, it was to visit a place he had long wanted to see… he is an AVID fan of Fixer Uppers with Chip and JoJo Gaines. So where else would you have to visit but The Silos in Waco, Texas, and their restaurant, Magnolia Table. I’ll share more photos of that visit… including my husband about to stand in line at 6:30 a.m. in order to eat breakfast in their new restaurant. I knew the place when it was a great restaurant called The Elite at the traffic circle in Waco. Elvis and his dad, Vernon, would stop in and grab a bite when he was stationed at Ft. Hood (and when they weren’t having coffee with my dad in Temple… another story for another time… my first meeting with the ‘King’ of rock-n-roll).

And those are just some of the highlights of a whirlwind trip to my favorite place. I am ready to sit down and continue to write my new stories. Please mark your calendars for Wednesday, August 1st, and check out my newest series as I introduce you to three sisters… Calla, Jasmine, and Lily who return to McKenna Springs to each find in her own way, that your heart will always lead you home again.

Happy Reading!

Debra

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