Fredericksburg in the Picking Season

Fredericksburg has been feeding travelers since the Germans laid it out in 1846, and the town still runs on the old arrangement, a long main street of stone buildings with working farmland in every direction. The peach orchards along the highway east of town have made the county's name, the vineyards have joined them over the last few decades, and from midsummer into fall the picking is the town's clock. Everything below assumes two nights, and a Sunday departure with a loaded cooler.

The town's specialty is the guest house, hundreds of them, many in the little Sunday houses the farm families once kept for weekends in town, and staying in one a few blocks off Main Street is the correct arrangement. Weekends book far ahead in harvest season and during the fall festivals, while midweek stays are easy and noticeably cheaper. The evenings cool off enough for a porch even in summer, eventually.

The German table is the founding cuisine, schnitzel and sausage and beer halls that have been pouring for generations, and it shares the street now with Hill Country barbecue and kitchens cooking from the surrounding farms. The correct rotation over two nights is one German dinner and one ambitious one, with a barbecue lunch in between, eaten early because the good pits sell out. The bakeries handle the mornings, and the peach stands handle everything else.

The orchards run along Highway 290 toward Stonewall, and the stands there sell whatever came off the trees that morning, peaches at the height of summer, then apples and late fruit as the season turns. The vineyards pick from August into October, and the tasting rooms strung along the same highway make an easy afternoon, best taken with a designated driver and no schedule. Buy fruit in quantities that seem excessive, since it will not survive the drive home anyway.

Enchanted Rock, the granite dome north of town, is the resident wonder, a bare pink summit with views over the whole Hill Country, and the climb takes under an hour at a respectful pace. Go at first light in the warm months, both for the heat and because the park caps its crowds by late morning. The backroads between the ranches, especially in the hour before sunset, are the other attraction, and they are free.

Reserve the weekend guest house a month or more out in picking season, book the serious dinner when you book the room, and check the festival calendar so Oktoberfest and the fall fair are a choice rather than a surprise. Summer afternoons are legitimately hot, so arrange the days around them, orchards and the rock in the morning, tasting rooms and porches after.

Leave town eastward through Stonewall with the cooler full and the windows down. The peaches will not last the week, which is the correct reason to plan the next trip.