On the Bus in Kuala Lumpur

I’ve always said that travel was an adventure, but as to getting there

Petronas Towers

being half the fun…in this case, not so much. Our adventure began with an announcement from out pilot, ‘We have a mechanical issue and we’re landing in Tokyo rather than Hong Kong’. What followed was several hours of bus rides, getting into a hotel room and ‘making do’ with toiletries they provided, finding our luggage, hunting for the next plane, and finally getting to our destination too late to make the first excursion I had planned. However, I was grateful that the pilot made the choice to take care of the mechanical issue rather than flying to Hong Kong with a plane full of people who had been exposed to human waste for more hours than absolutely necessary. So once I was in Kuala Lumpur, my plans had to change, and that’s absolutely what’s expected when one is having an adventure.  I first wrote about KL in 2014 (see Flying around in Kuala Lumpur); I learned a lot more about it on this trip.

A Collection of Courthouses

Lake LBJ

We spent a good deal of time exploring tiny towns on our road trip to Packsaddle, but on the way back we stopped at only a few places. We did spend some time at the county seats, read a few historical markers, and took a few pictures. There were some places that peeked our interest, plus a few we’ll run into along the way, and I’m sure that some later blogs will relate our trips back to these places that I’ll just highlight in this blog post.

Poking around Packsaddle

Fleda V. Starr Smith was born in 1891 in the community of Packsaddle,

Fleda V. Starr Smith in 1921

Texas. That piece of information started our road trip from Keller to Llano and back. Actually it put into motion a whole host of escapades that have led to a lot of interesting information, but not a lot of clarification of one of the family mysteries – just what did the initial V in Grandmother’s name stand for? Grandmother told stories about growing up in the Llano area, none of which I now remember, but I didn’t realize just where that was and I don’t suppose I ever asked what her middle name was. I did find that she was no relation to Belle Starr, but there lies another tale and perhaps another road trip. Recent Texas maps weren’t particularly helpful in locating Packsaddle; thankfully Google Maps has come along and although the little town isn’t on the map, Packsaddle Mountain is.

Llooking in on Llano

There are times when I really wish I had listened more carefully to the

Llano River

stories my grandmother told about her early life in Texas. What I know about Llano comes mostly from studying geology in college: the Llano uplift is a geologic dome about 90 miles in diameter made up of exposures of Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks that are surrounded by Paleozoic and Cretaceous sedimentary strata. This makes a geologist’s heart go pitty-pat as does the fact that Llanite is a form of granite that is only found in the Llano Uplift. However, there are lots of interesting things about Llano that have nothing to do with geology.