Bluebonnet Season

April 3, 2022

We’ve been looking forward to the bluebonnets making their appearance this year. For whatever reason, though, they are a bit later than usual. They still are not in “full swing,” but it was time to make our regular trip to Washington County to see the show!

Along the way to Washington County, we make a brief stop at the Grimes County courthouse in Anderson, Texas.

I would like to come back one day and spend some more time here. Anderson is a pretty little town with a rich history. It is the home of the Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site, and the Notorious John Hamilton “Dick” Lindsay once lived near there. You can read more about “Notorious Dick” in Good Times: Clay Lindsay, A Good Man from Mason, Texas, by Deloris Haley Lindsay. (Ha! I managed to slip in another reference to Mrs. Lindsay’s book!)

Our adventure today took us to the area between Washington-on-the-Brazos and Chappell Hill, which I described in a previous post. Today, however, we started off in Chappell Hill and worked our way north, rather than our usual route in the opposite direction. Our primary target was Meyersville Road, one of our favorite drives.

This route, which runs from FM 1155 on the south end to TX-105 on the north, crosses through the New Year’s Creek valley. It has some pretty vistas on the south end. The name suggests that there was a community named Meyersville at some point in time, but I can find no information of such a place in that area.

The road makes a sharp turn to the north and descends into the valley. There are always lots of pretty flowers along here at this time of the year.

At the bottom of the hill the road makes a sharp turn to the left, and then crosses over New Year’s Creek. The creek was named by some of the early settlers of Austin’s Colony, who arrived at and camped along the creek on January 1, 1822. The creek marks the boundary between North and South Meyersville Road. There is evidence that this area has some pretty big floods from time-to-time.

A little further along we came to one of several tree tunnels in the area. This is one of our favorites.

Instead of following Meyersville Road all the way to TX-105, as we normally would, we turned onto Earlywine Road and worked our way back to FM 1155. Earlywine twists and turns around some pastures, and then crosses over Rocky Creek, a tributary of New Year’s Creek. The creek bottom is home to palmettos and red buckeye.

Earlywine Road ends at Copelyn Springs Road. There, we turned right, and a short distance from the junction we spotted a small patch of white lilies growing alongside the ditch. Patches of lilies are usually a good indication of a current or former homesite. In this case, though, they marked the location of a cemetery. I think it might have been Coplyn Spring Cemetery (the spelling appears different than the road name on Find a Grave).

This is a very unusual cemetery. I think it may be split into two parts. Either that, or there are two separate cemeteries across the road from each other within walking distance. All of the graves seem recent, as in 1970s or later.

After paying our respects to the few graves at both sites, we continued on our way down Copelyn Springs Road, which crosses over New Year’s Creek before ending at FM 1155.

Turning left onto FM 1155, we headed toward Washington-on-the-Brazos. For those of you who don’t know, Washington-on-the-Brazos is the site where the Texas Declaration of Independence was signed. From there, we headed home and finished our adventure with a nice dinner at Los Pericos.