Mittwoch, 22. Oktober 2008

Buffalo Gap Historic Village

 23.Juni / Maps
von Fredericksburg geht es weiter Richtung Amarillo
vorbei am Historic Village von Buffalo Gap
..durch die Beschreibung im Reisefuehrers hatten wir erwartet, einen historischen Ort vorzufinden, in dem man das Leben der Leute zur damaligen Zeit darstellt. Wir haben einen ziemlich grossen Umweg gemacht, um hierher zu finden und waren enttaeuscht, nur einige zusammengetragene Stuecke Altertum vorzufinden. Es war den Umweg nicht wert


Buffalo Gap Historic Village is a large museum of fifteen outdoor structures and West Texas artifacts that reach back to the late 19th century and the early 20th century located in the small town of Buffalo Gap south of Abilene, Texas. The museum focuses particularly upon the years 1883, 1905, and 1925. The village is centered on the original Old Taylor County Courthouse and Jail from 1879. Several entire buildings have been moved to the village from other parts of the state for display, including an early Texaco gasoline station.[2] The Old Taylor County Courthouse and Jail building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Other buildings include pioneer log cabins, a medical display, a barbershop, railroad depot with working telegraph system, blacksmith shop, two-room school, bank, post office, and air-conditioned chapel. Additionally, there is a large collection of firearms, Indian, and farm/ranch-related material, all displayed informally. The gift shop has an assortment of books and Texas gifts. A short video on the history of the region is presented in the visitors center. Picnicking facilities and playground equipment are available.

The village originated as an historic site in 1956. Three years later, Ernie Wilson, a lawyer and historian, rancher, and churchman, purchased the courthouse building and established a small museum of Indian and Western artifacts. Wilson also procured two other Taylor County structures, the Hill House and the Knight/Sayles Cabin. All are incorporated in the Buffalo Gap Village. Wilson died in 1970, and the site was purchased in 1977 by R. Lee Rode, M.D., and his wife, Ann. The Rodes expanded the site by acquiring more regional historic structures. When Rode retired from medicine, he offered the village for sale. Through the efforts of the Taylor County Historical Foundation, the village was maintained intact and acquired by the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation. It is operated as a non-profit educational facility. The village charges a small admission fee.

Since 1999, the McWhiney Foundation has developed an interpretive theme for the site. Visitors can learn the history of the last half century of the Texas frontier between 1875 and 1925. They can obtain an understanding of the forces, such as the automobile, that brought change to the region. The village offers special events and lectures. A short book, The Texas You Expect: The Story of Buffalo Gap Historic Village, is now in publication.

Buffalo Gap Village offers the public access to the Chautauqua Learning Series. These are monthly lectures based on the Chautauqua movement which spread throughout the rural United States at the turn of the 20th century. Speakers on the circuit included the entertainer Charles Ross Taggart and the three-time Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan. A sample lecture is entitled "Victorian Underpinnings: Why Did They Wear That?" about heavy women's clothing in the 19th century.

Buffalo Gap also hosts musical events, including the annual Bluegrass Festival.

The community is four miles northeast of Lake Abilene and the Abilene State Park. Less than ten miles away is the new state-of-the art Frontier Texas! museum in downtown Abilene, which features narration by the former Gunsmoke star Buck Taylor. Lake Kirby within Abilene offers fishing and picknickin. Quelle:Wikipedia

Sonntag, 19. Oktober 2008

Fredericksburg in Texas, Biergarten Bratwurst und Sauerkraut


22.Juni / Maps
man sagt eine sehr deutsche Stadt im Herzen von Texas mit Biergaerten, einer Brauerei und Speisen, wie Bratwurst und Sauerkraut, wobei der Anblick der Stadt doch sehr wenig mit deutschen Staedten zu tun hat, eins ist aber wohl noch sehr deutsch, um 18 Uhr haben alle Geschaefte, die meisten davon sowieso nur Andenkenlaeden, geschlossen



Fredericksburg, the county seat of Gillespie County, is seventy miles west of Austin in the central part of the county. The town was one of a projected series of German settlements from the Texas coast to the land north of the Llano River, originally the ultimate destination of the German immigrants sent to Texas by the Adelsverein. In August 1845 John O. Meusebach left New Braunfels with a surveying party to select a site for a second settlement en route to the Fisher-Miller Land Grant. He eventually chose a tract of land sixty miles northwest of New Braunfels, where two streams met four miles above the Pedernales River; the streams were later named Barons Creek, in Meusebach's honor, and Town Creek. Meusebach was impressed by the abundance of water, stone, and timber and upon his return to New Braunfels arranged to buy 10,000 acres on credit. The first wagontrain of 120 settlers arrived from New Braunfels on May 8, 1846, after a sixteen-day journey, accompanied by an eight-man military escort provided by the Adelsverein. Surveyor Hermann Wilke laid out the town, which Meusebach named Fredericksburg after Prince Frederick of Prussia, an influential member of the Adelsverein. Each settler received one town lot and ten acres of farmland nearby. The town was laid out like the German villages along the Rhine, from which many of the colonists had come, with one long, wide main street roughly paralleling Town Creek. The earliest houses in Fredericksburg were built simply, of post oak logs stuck upright in the ground. These were soon replaced by Fachwerk houses, built of upright timbers with the spaces between filled with rocks and then plastered or whitewashed over.
The colonists planted corn, built storehouses to protect their provisions and trade goods, and prepared for the arrival of more immigrant trains, which came throughout the summer. Within two years Fredericksburg had grown into a thriving town of almost 1,000, despite an epidemic that spread from Indianola and New Braunfels and killed between 100 and 150 residents in the summer and fall of 1846. The first two years also saw the opening of a wagon road between Fredericksburg and Austin; the signing of the Meusebach-Comanche Treaty, which effectively eliminated the threat of Indian attack; the opening of the first privately owned store, by J. L. Ransleben; the construction of the Vereins-Kirche, which served for fifty years as a church, school, fortress, and meeting hall; the formal organization of Gillespie County by the Texas legislature, which made Fredericksburg the county seat; the founding of Zodiac, a nearby settlement, by a group of Mormons under Lyman Wight; the construction of the Nimitz Hotel; and the establishment by the United States Army of Fort Martin Scott, which became an important market for the merchants and laborers of Fredericksburg, two miles east of town. After the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1849, Fredericksburg also benefited from its situation as the last town before El Paso on the Emigrant or Upper El Paso Road.
Religion played an important part in the lives of the German settlers of Gillespie County. Devout farmers drove as much as twenty miles into town for religious services and built Fredericksburg's characteristic Sunday houses for use on weekends and religious holidays. Though most of the original colonists were members of the Evangelical Protestant Church, there were also Lutherans, Methodists, and Catholics. Initially, all communions held services in the Vereins-Kirche, but in 1848 the Catholics built their own church, which was supplanted in 1860 by the Marienkirche (old St. Mary's Church). Also in 1848 the German missionary Father Menzel erected a large wooden cross on Cross Mountain just north of Fredericksburg. The Methodists withdrew from the Vereins-Kirche around the same time, and another group left the Evangelical Protestants in 1852 and formed Zion's Evangelical Lutheran Church under Rev. Philip F. Zizelman. Their church building, completed the following year, was the first Lutheran church in the Hill Country.
The German settlers were also passionate believers in the importance of education. The first school in Fredericksburg was established under Johann Leyendecker, in whose home Catholic services were held immediately after the town's founding. Leyendecker was succeeded as teacher a year later by Jacob Brodbeck, who was in turn succeeded by Rev. Gottlieb Burchard Dangers. In 1852 Heinrich Ochs replaced Dangers; Ochs remained an important figure in the community until his death in 1897. The first public school, with August Siemering as teacher, and the first official Catholic school in Fredericksburg were established in 1856.
Fredericksburg, like many of the German communities in south central Texas, generally supported the Union in the Civil War. Still, despite widespread opposition to slavery and secessionq on philosophical grounds, a number of Fredericksburg residents supported the Confederacy. Charles H. Nimitz organized the Gillespie Rifles for the Confederate Army and was later appointed enrolling officer for the frontier district. The Fredericksburg Southern Aid Society subscribed more than $5,000 in food and clothing for Confederate soldiers in 1861. In general, however, the people of Fredericksburg and Gillespie County suffered under Confederate martial law, imposed in 1862, and from the depredations of such outlaws as James P. Waldrip. Waldrip, the leader of a notorious gang, was shot by an unknown assassin beneath a live oak tree outside the Nimitz Hotel in 1867.
The bitter experience of the Civil War strengthened the traditional German determination not to get involved in state and national affairs. The Germans tried to maintain their independence by steadfastly refusing to learn or use English. The first newspaper in the county was the German-language Fredericksburg Wochenblatt, established in 1877, and a teamster who drove freight from Austin to Fredericksburg in the 1880s claimed that the local sheriff, who spoke German and broken English, was the only person in Fredericksburg who could act as an interpreter for him. The most authoritative history of early Fredericksburg was Fest-Ausgabe zum fuenfzig-jaehrigen Jubilaeum der deutschen Kolonie Friedrichsburg, written by Robert G. Penniger for the town's fiftieth-anniversary celebration in 1896. Not until after 1900 were the first purely English-speaking teachers employed in Fredericksburg's public schools.
As the town grew in size and importance, however, its self-imposed isolation was beginning to break down. The first Gillespie County Fair was held in 1881 at Fort Martin Scott and moved to Fredericksburg in 1889. The fair, celebrated as the first in Texas, soon attracted relatively large numbers of visitors to Fredericksburg. The town got its first electric-light company in 1896 and its first ice factory in 1907; by 1904 the estimated population had risen to 1,632. Another factor in Fredericksburg's decreasing insularity was the construction of the San Antonio, Fredericksburg and Northern Railway, the first train of which rolled into Fredericksburg on November 17, 1913, and was greeted with a three-day celebration. The railroad was reorganized as the Fredericksburg and Northern in 1917 and remained in operation until July 25, 1942, when it died, a victim of improved roads and automobiles.
By World War I a number of residents of Fredericksburg considered Penniger's editorial newspaper too pro-German. Another symbol of change was the spring 1928 vote to incorporate, a move the people of Fredericksburg had resisted for eighty-two years because they preferred to use the county as the unit of local government: why, they reasoned, pay two sets of public officials when one would suffice? At the time of the vote Fredericksburg was the largest unincorporated town in the United States, and the increasing size and complexity of both the town and the county made a change necessary. The 1930 United States census, the first in which Fredericksburg was included, gave the town's population as 2,416. Thereafter the population grew slowly but steadily, reaching 3,544 in 1940, 3,847 in 1950, 4,629 in 1960, 5,326 in 1970, and 6,412 in 1980. As Fredericksburg grew it became the principal manufacturing center of Gillespie County. At various times it has had a furniture factory, a cement plant, a poultry-dressing plant, granite and limestone quarries, a mattress factory, a peanut-oil plant, a sewing factory, a metal and iron works, and a tannery. As early as 1930, however, the town was also becoming known as a resort center, with a tourist camp and hunting and fishing opportunities; a significant part of the town's economy continues to depend upon its ability to attract the tourist trade. One of the organizations that has helped make Fredericksburg an important tourist center is the Gillespie County Historical Society, founded in 1934 to preserve local history and traditions. Its immediate goal was the completion, with the help of the Civil Works Administration, of a replica of the Vereins-Kirche, which had been torn down in 1897. When it was completed in 1936 for the Texas Centennial celebration, the structure became the home of the Pioneer Museum. After the museum was moved in 1955 the new Vereins-Kirche became the home of the Gillespie County archives. Another local structure of some historical significance is the Admiral Nimitz Center in the old Nimitz Hotel, commemorating native son Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, a hero of World War II.
In the 1980s Fredericksburg had thirty-eight restaurants, thirteen motels, a resort farm, a campground, three art galleries, and twenty antique stores. In addition, the town was the site of a number of annual events, many of which recall Fredericksburg's German pioneer past, which attracted visitors from throughout the state. Among these events were the Wild Game Dinner (for men only) in March and the Damenfest (for women only) in October, both of which benefit the Fredericksburg Heritage Foundation; the Easter Fires Pageant; the Founders Day celebration, on the Saturday nearest May 8, which benefits the Gillespie County Historical Society; A Night in Old Fredericksburg, in July; Oktoberfest; and the Kristkindl Market and Candlelight Homes Tour, both in December. The Gillespie County Fair is held in Fredericksburg on the third weekend in August; the fairgrounds are also the site of racing meets on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July and a hunter-jumper horse show in June. In 1990 the population was 6,934, and in 2000 the community had 8,911 inhabitants and 910 businesses.

wir sind mit unserem Camper etwas ausserhalb auf den Lady Bird Johnson RV Park gefahren, sauber, fuer Passport America Inhaber auch sehr guenstig. Wie Ihr auf unserem Photo sehen koennt, haben wir unsere Kraeuter um italienisch zu kochen immer dabei.
Ulla und Gino unterwegs in Amerika, reisen mit dem Wohnmobil

Mittwoch, 15. Oktober 2008

San Antonio in Texas, the Alamo, Riverwalk


2o. Juni / Maps
San Antonio ist eine Stadt im US-amerikanischen Bundesstaat Texas und liegt am gleichnamigen Fluss. Es ist County Seat des Bexar County.


Mit 1.256.000 Einwohnern ist San Antonio die siebtgrößte Stadt in den USA und nach Houston die zweitgrößte Stadt in Texas. Der wirtschaftlichen Bedeutung nach liegt San Antonio im Staat Texas an dritter Stelle, hinter Houston und dem Ballungsgebiet Dallas-Fort Worth.







Die kulturelle Vielfalt der Stadt ist von spanischen, mexikanischen, angloamerikanischen und deutschen Einflüssen geprägt.


International bekannt ist die Stadt San Antonio durch ihre Basketball-Mannschaft, die San Antonio Spurs, durch das Fort Alamo, sowie den River Walk.

San Antonio ist die älteste Stadt in Texas. Das Gebiet wurde 1691 erstmals von einer spanischen Vorhut erkundet. Der Name geht zurück auf den Heiligen Antonius von Padua, an dessen Gedanktag die Missionare in der Gegend haltgemacht hatten. 1718 bauten die Franziskaner die Missionsstation San António de Valero erbaut wurde, jenes Gebäude, das heute gemeinhin als das Alamo bekannt ist. Bei einem Militärstützpunkt zum Schutz der Missionare wurde 1735 die Siedlung San Antonio de Béxar gegründet, von der die heutige Stadt abstammt.
Die Stadt war zunächst Teil der spanischen Besitzungen und dann derer von Mexiko. San Antonio wurde am 9. Dezember 1835 von Truppen der bald daraufhin ausgerufenen Republik Texas im Aufstand gegen das mexikanische Regime von Antonio López de Santa Anna erobert.

Sehenswert sind die fünf spanischen Missionen, einschließlich der Mission San António de Valero (1718 gegründet). Sie wurde 1793 in ein Fort umgewandelt, das Alamo (spanisch: „Pappel”) genannt wurde. Ebenso zu besichtigen ist der 1722 erbaute spanische Gouverneurspalast. Weiterhin von Bedeutung sind die San-Fernando-Kathedrale (1873 fertiggestellt), der historische King William District (König-Wilhelm-Viertel), ein von deutschen Kaufleuten im späten 19. Jahrhundert besiedeltes Wohngebiet zu Ehren von König Wilhelm I. von Preußen (dem späteren Kaiser Wilhelm I.) benannt, sowie der 228,6 Meter hohe „Tower of the Americas”. Weiters der River Walk -- eine durchs Stadtzentrum führende Flusspromenade entlang des San Antonio River, im Kern gute fünf Kilometer lang, gesäumt von reifer subtropischer Vegetation, Cafés und Boutiquen. Der Bau der Promenade geht auf die 1920er und 30er Jahre zurück, zuerst aus Gründen der Flussregulierung, dann zur Zeit der Weltwirtschaftskrise zum Zweck der Verschönerung sowie gleichzeitig als Arbeitsbeschaffungsmaßnahme (unter der Schirmherrschaft der Works Progress Administration). Quelle:Wikipedia

Ulla und Gino unterwegs in Amerika

Freitag, 10. Oktober 2008

Sounds of Volcanic Eruption

In a high-tech version of those baking soda-and-vinegar experiments at science fairs, scientists have simulated a key stage of volcanic eruptions where steam and other fluids rushing through cracks in underground rocks create particular “acoustic emissions."
The study, detailed in the Oct. 10 issue of the journal Science, could help geologists make better forecasts of volcanic eruptions.
Volcanic eruptions aren't just the lava, ash and other material that spews out of the volcano's mouth; they're also seismic events that shake the ground, just like an earthquake. And this shaking isn't the only seismic event that the eruption creates.
The other kind of seismicity associated with the volcano occurs after the initial shaking, but before the eruption, "when you have fluids and gases moving through the edifice and cracks and fault zones [and] you get this characteristic ringing and a resonance," said study team member Philip Benson of the University College London.
These so-called "low frequency events" are below the range of human hearing, but are detectable by instruments. Because they occur before the actual eruption, they could help predict when a volcano is about to blow.
Geologists have suspected that these low frequency events were created by the fluids interacting with damage zones in the rocks.
"But no one's actually seen these damage zones," Benson told LiveScience.
Scaling down
Benson and his colleagues set out to simulate these events and test theories with a scaled-down experiment in the lab using cylindrical rock cores drilled from Sicily's Mt. Etna.
The rock samples were placed in a chamber that was pressurized to simulate being buried at a depth of 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) underground. A piston is used to fracture the rock, to mimic a volcanic tremor.
"The first stage is to create a fault in the sample, and a damage zone," Benson explained. The next step is to decompress the sample.
"The pressure release stimulates rapid fluid movement," Benson said.
The fluid movement produced acoustic emissions just as it would in a real eruption, "but in the laboratory, because we're scaling down the whole process, the frequencies go up, and now it's above human hearing range," Benson explained. "But the physical mechanism responsible for these effects is the same."
Benson's team could then take samples of the rock cores, slice them up, and look at them in a microscope and "pick out the exact spot where these low frequency events occur," Benson said. The team was able to find the undulations and cracks that various theories predicted would be in the rock.
"So this is going to just simply improve our understanding of exactly how these processes occur," and will help volcano forecasters sharpen their forecasting models, Benson said.
Recreated By Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer
Volcano Quiz, Part 1
Natural Disasters: Top 10 U.S. Threats
Images: Wild Volcanoes

discover Sicily accommodation in Terrasinini

Montag, 6. Oktober 2008

Blue Ridge Parkway Besucherpass

Blue Ridge Parkway
Neuer Besucherpass
Für die Touristenroute Blue Ridge Parkway im US-Bundesstaat North Carolina gibt es jetzt einen Besucherpass. Er bietet freien oder ermäßigten Eintritt zu 29 Attraktionen entlang der Strecke, teilt das Fremdenverkehrsamt von North Carolina mit. Dazu gehören unter anderem eine Trolleyfahrt durch die Stadt Asheville und eine Bootsfahrt auf dem Lake Lure, einem der Drehorte für den Film "Dirty Dancing". In der Variante für zwei Tage kostet die "Go Blue Ridge Card" umgerechnet 58 Euro für Erwachsene und 36 Euro für Kinder. Es gibt außerdem Drei- und Fünf-Tage-Pässe.
Der insgesamt gut 750 Kilometer lange "Blue Ridge Parkway" gilt als eine der abwechslungsreichsten Autorouten im Osten der USA und wird jährlich von etwa zehn Millionen Touristen besucht. Auch neue Informationsangebote für Urlauber stellt North Carolina bereit. Im Internet lässt sich eine neue Broschüre zum Bundesstaat in deutscher Sprache jetzt kostenlos herunterladen.

den Blue Ridge Parkway sollte man nicht unbedingt im April besuchen >>>

Mittwoch, 1. Oktober 2008

TAUCHEN IN SIZILIEN, diving in Sicily

Von Linus Geschke
Giftige Skorpionfische, riesige Zackenbarsche, majestätische Wracks: Trotz seiner eindrucksvollen Unterwasserwelt ist Sizilien für Taucher bislang allenfalls ein Geheimtipp. Die schönste Schiffsruine liegt so tief, dass Anfänger am Strand bleiben müssen.


Nur müde spritzt die Gischt am Bug des acht Meter langen Bootes empor. Es ist ein heißer und windstiller Tag, das Mittelmeer liegt träge und glitzernd dar, als hätte es jemand mit Öl überzogen. Sechs Männer sitzen auf den Holzbänken im Schatten des Sonnensegels, ihre Tauchausrüstung fest mit der Reling verzurrt. >>>> weiter

eine sehr gute Tauchschule befindet sich hier vor Ort in Terrasini
Ferienwohnung in Terrasini