WHY WIMBERLEY?

People sometimes ask why, out of all the cute little Hill Country towns, we settled on Wimberley. It certainly wasn't an easy choice to make. Perhaps that is why it took us 30 years to finally make a move.

We both went to school in Austin, and absolutely adored it, but that was in the early 70's, and it was a very different place back then. After the computer industry exploded, and half of California migrated there, we decided we needed to switch our focus, and look for a smaller town somewhere between Austin and San Antonio, in the area known as the Hill Country.

I had been on a retreat to Wimberley back in college, along with the other advisors in my dorm, so it was one of the first places I thought of, but then we discovered rafting in New Braunfels, and Schlitterbahn, the amazing water park that is there. Unfortunateley, so did a million other people, and property values went through the roof.

Next, we fell in love with Fredericksburg, which was settled by German immigrants. They had biergartens with oompah bands, and celebrated Wurstfest. They also had hundreds of B&B's, and a main street filled with quaint shops in historic buildings, and attracted thousands of tourists, who also fell in love with it, and - you guessed it - property values went through the roof. So we kept on looking.

Then came Boerne, just outside of San Antonio, on I-10. It too had that quaint German feel, but not as many shops and restaurants, and therefore, not as many tourists. We actually spent some time with a realtor there, when we thought John might lose his job with Mobil and have to take a rotational job overseas, which meant we could live anywhere, as long as it was near an airport. But then Mobil offered him a transfer to Dallas, and we took that instead. By the time we started thinking about the Hill Country again, Boerne had pretty much transformed into a bedroom community for yuppies working in San Antonio, so we kept on looking.

The years flew by, and suddenly we had a daughter attending Texas State, in San Marcos - only 30 minutes from Wimberley. Because Wimberley is a bit off the beaten path, and not a convenient commute to any large cities, it had not changed all that much from the sleepy little town I remembered from college days....which is probably why it had attracted so many artists, musicians and hippies who wanted to flee the hubub of Austin....which made it absolutely perfect, for us!