A weekend at the lake and fire and brimstone...

Cynthia and I just got back from a weekend in Kingsland, on Lake LBJ (We celebrated our anniversary and did our own personal writing retreat at the lake house of writer Donna Bratton -- she rents the place for writing retreats, so check it out).

How can you not relax with a view of a private cove:

We had a nice romantic time and got some good writing done and had dinner at the Junction House Restaurant,which is where a certain slasher movie was filmed:

(Food Friday was absolutely terrific -- we went back for brunch on Sunday, which was also terrific.).

We had a burger one day at the Sonic, where they have dinosaurs on the menu.  Or something:

We were pretty much off the Internet and made sure not to catch the TV news until this morning.  When we were scheduled to come home.  And our route home along Highway 71 was blocked due to wildfires... 

This is just stunning, and not in a good way...The pic comes from the Texas Interagency Coordination Center (if you click the link, you can see the whole state).  The angry red flame at the lower left is Bastrop, about twenty miles or so east of here, where around 476 more than 500 homes have been destroyed (including the  home of a friend of ours :-(), and half of Bastrop State Park is, well, charred.  It's a beautiful area and where I set the contemporary scenes in CHRONAL ENGINE.

The American-Statesman has some pretty good up-to-the-minute coverage on its blog here.  The Bastrop County Office of Emergency Management has a Facebook page here.  KXAN covers it here.


Fortunately, no one seems to have been hurt yet.  But our thoughts and prayers are with everyone involved.