Hondo is a pretty decent sized town with all the fast food joints, a Super Wal-Mart, and H-E-B grocery store which to my delight has similar prices to Wal-Mart and in several cases were cheaper believe it or not. It’s a nice place to spend some time and close to the fun in San Antonio.
Near Hondo is the town of Sabinal where I went to the Wild Hog Festival to dip my toe in the Texas culture. There were lots of food booths of course. I got my first smoked turkey leg there and it was delicious! There were rides for the kiddies, a climbing wall, and lots of things on sale. A school band performed a wonderful concert of Texas tunes in the pavilion followed by a karate demonstration by the local karate school.
The highlight, of course, is the greased hog chasing. All ages can participate in chasing one around a pen to catch it and have your partner put him in a burlap sack then drag it across a line in the pen. The fastest time wins. There were many surprises with some younger kids outdoing the older ones. A couple of the teams had to catch the hog several times before successfully getting it in the bag. The amount of chasing is limited to 3 minutes to keep the hogs from getting overheated. I was very glad I didn’t have to clean any of the clothes of the participants after as it got pretty dirty.
There is one local family who attends the festival every year. They get commemorative T-shirts specially made for the entire extended family before coming. It days make it easy to find each other in the crowd.
For more pics click here.
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