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.

By and By in Baby Head

Near the former town of Baby Head

In our research for this short road trip, Dave ran found Baby Head Mountain on Google Maps. Being the curious person that he is, he had to see what had been written about the area. He was a bit appalled to find that the information about Baby Head was just as grizzly as the name implied. And after what he’d read, Baby Head became a destination rather than an aside to our road trip.

Charting Cherokee

There is a lot of history in Texas involving Native Americans, but it doesn’t

White Church

pop up on historical markers nor is it referenced in information written about the towns we visited. So just for your information, Texas has had at least fourteen Indian Tribes living in the state at one time or another. The Apaches were in far West Texas, the Kiowas in the eastern part of the pan-handle, the Comanches in Central Texas, the Wichitas in North Texas, the Tawakoni and Kitsai tribes in East Texas, the Caddo and Tonkawa tribes in far East Texas, the Bidalis in the southeast part of the state, the Karankawa along the northern Gulf Coast, the Coahuiteco and Carrizo tribes along the southern Gulf Coast and across to the southern part of the Rio Grande, and the Jumano and Eastern Pueblos along the Rio Grande in West Texas. Their culture and traditions have been marginalized by the coming of the Anglos.

Seeking out San Saba

The first question Dave asked when we rolled into town was, ‘What does

Big horn sheep

San Saba mean?’ Of course I didn’t know (it’s not French or Italian – maybe Spanish?), so we asked the oracle (Google) and here’s what we got: First, there is no translation from Spanish to English for Saba, but San can mean saint. So going with our guess of Saint Saba, our second bit of information told us that Saint Sabas was, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a ‘Christian Palestinian monk, champion of orthodoxy in the 5th-century controversies over the nature of Christ. He founded the monastery known as the Great Laura of Mar Saba, a renowned community of contemplative monks in the Judean desert near Jerusalem. This community became a prototype for the subsequent development of Eastern Orthodox monasticism.’ The Catholic Encyclopedia pretty much agrees, ‘Basilian monk, hermit, founded the monastery at Mar Saba near Jerusalem. Died 532.’ And if you were wondering, Mar Saba is ‘Old Man’ in Aramaic. There are at least five other saints named San Sabas.  So how did Texas get a river, a county, and a town named after a 5^th century monk? I haven’t uncovered that piece of information, yet!