Texas Bluebonnets

By June Hogue

When my car was new (16 years ago!) Royce and I took our maiden voyage in it—we followed the Texas Bluebonnet Trail and it was an unforgettable experience. We left Irving and started south just as the bluebonnets were beginning to bloom. We had obtained a map of the Texas Bluebonnet Trail and followed it all the way to Brownsville. We took the back roads most of the time for that was where the trail led according to the map. Royce always liked to drive so I could sit back and leisurely enjoy all the scenery throughout the Hill Country on the back roads through farm lands, ranch lands and pastures.

There was little traffic on the trail so we felt safe in stopping to take pictures or just pause to inhale the fresh air and view the indescribable beauty of the hill country in the spring. The trail lead us through back roads that often wound up at some rancher’s front door or the back side of some farmer’s barn…but there would be an explosion of color that came from the wild flowers…mostly bluebonnets but mixed in with sunflowers and Indian Paint Brush and other wild flowers of Spring.

It brought back many memories of my high school years when our school’s band annually traveled from West Texas (Monahans) to San Antonio for the Battle of the Flowers Parade in which we marched each year. You become a real nature lover on these journeys and the memories last a lifetime! My mother was always our school sponsor for these trips—she enjoyed the kids and they all loved her. I often wondered if her eardrums nearly burst from listening to the kids on a school bus singing “A Hundred Green Bottles A Hanging On the Wall”!

It has been more than 60 years since those journeys, yet they are held in my memory like it was yesterday…for each Spring when the bluebonnets begin to bloom my mind is filled with a thousand memories of all those journeys and the beautiful Texas Bluebonnets that marked our trail with those hues in blue---memories that have lasted a lifetime!

I'm enclosing a link below to a presentation with beautiful scenes in Texas during the time of the Bluebonnets. Texas Bluebonnets