National Geographic Traveler’s list of the top 50 Drives of a Lifetime, featuring the World’s Greatest Scenic Routes, landed on social bookmarking site Digg.com‘s front page today.

And guess which route is featured alongside drives along the Amalfi Coast of Italy, the Florida Keys, and the Pirate Route of Jamaica? Yep, the Texas Hill Country.

And guess which town gets first mention along that route? Indeed, the “hell-raising Cowboy Capital of The World,” Bandera, Texas.

The article mentions Bandera’s massive chicken-fried steaks, Arkey Blue’s Silver Dollar saloon, the Frontier Times Museum, and OST (Old Spanish Trail).

From Bandera the route winds through Kerrville, Fredericksburg, Enchanted Roch, Johnson City, New Braunfels (where my wife is now with our kids at the children’s museum) and San Antonio.

Being featured on the front page of Digg.com is a rare honor and creates a huge amount of web traffic to the linked web sites. One strategy of some internet moneymakers is to create a web site at a cost of only a few dollars, then post photos, articles, and videos until one is featured on Digg’s front page. They then sell the domain for a big profit.

The Bandera-mentioning National Geographic article appears today alongside “4th Generation iPhone Now Being Tested,” “Puppy VS. Praying Mantis,” and “The Paint-Less Coca-Cola Would Save Earth One Can at a Time.”

The Riverside Players theatre group has been one of the best new additions to the Bandera County arts and entertainment landscape in recent years. I am a big fan of theatre, especially theatre small enough that you’ll probably run into the star players at church or OST.

These actors work very hard to bring their art to our community, and the money they raise is for a good cause.

These images make up a black-and-white set from the photos I took at their Nov. 22 final season performance of A Christmas Carol. You can view the full album in the Bandera.net photo gallery (best quality) or the Bulletin’s DotPhoto.com account.

Update: Read Bulletin Managing Editor Jessica Hawley-Jerome’s story on the dachshund rescue, now posted to BanderaBulletin.com. Four children living in “deplorable” conditions were also taken from the puppy mill property by Child Protective Services.

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We received breaking news this morning of a massive seizure by Bandera County Animal Control. Bulletin Managing Editor Jessica Hawley-Jerome and I drove out to the pound to talk with officials and take photos; the result you can see in the surrounding photos.

These sweet-tempered little dachshunds, 43 of them (the largest seizure ever in Bandera County, according to officials), were rescued from an alleged puppy mill in Utopia.

It was a blessing to cross paths with these little fellows and ladies and take their photos for the newspaper. You can see more photos and read Jessica’s story in the Wednesday edition of the Bulletin.

Visit the Bandera County Animal Control web site for information on how you can help give animals a better future here in our community.

Plenty of rain soaking Bandera County and Texas from Austin to Rockport, which has recorded up to 10 inches.

From the photos below, shot along the Medina River earlier this week and then this morning by my wife Jacklen, you can see how much more water is flowing with our overnight rains.

Have any good wet weather or flooding photos to share? E-mail them to James@team-outlaw.net.

Update: Thanks to everyone who sent in their comments about What’s Missing in Bandera County! I’ll have a write up with your responses online this weekend. If you have anything else you would like to share, or a Bandera County article you would like to see written about, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thank you again!

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I recently posted the query on BanderaBulletin.com, “What type of restaurant would you like in Bandera?” with choices of Italian, 24-hour Diner, and Buffet. The 24-hour diner is currently in the lead with 40.1% of the vote.

To expand on that and touch on a broader theme, what do YOU guys believe is missing in Bandera County and why? Entertainment, health care, cultural arts, local news and information, whatever specific or broad idea that comes to your mind.

I’m interested in hearing your responses and will write an article about them for Bandera.net. I’ll also be hitting up MySpace readers and the Twitterverse for their opinions.

The landscape of Bandera County is changing fast, despite many grognards who have decried otherwise, evidenced by new restaurants and ideas brought to life in the past couple of years. From the Arthur Nagel Community Clinic to the Ital’Yo gelato cafe, the Bandera Dodge House dance parties to the Dogleg Coffeehouse on Main Street.

I want to hear what you think is missing in Bandera County. Leave your comment below, e-mail James@team-outlaw.net, tweet me at www.twitter.com/banderaoutlaw, or call/text me at 830-688-1564.

Thank you, as always, for supporting The Outlaw!

You can read snippets of all my latest adventures and news via the Twitter feed on the right side of this page, or by visiting www.twitter.com/banderaoutlaw. Daily doses of community journalism delights from all across Bandera County!

As I was getting gas at Shell in Bandera tonight, refilling after my long trip to the big DFW last week, I took notice that the Air-Serv air/water unit was pouring water out onto the ground and into the street.

I went inside to inform the clerk, whose official response was, “Oh, well that’s not our problem. Guess somebody’s going to have a big water bill.”

Sigh.

So I went back outside and fiddled around with the thing until it stopped running like a faucet. The little squeezer wasn’t unsqueezing, so it just kept sending out a steady stream of H2O.

Apparently the Shell clerk didn’t know the fix would be so easy. And apparently she didn’t know the machine has a 24-hour 800 number you can call to report a broken machine.

I came back here to my office and promptly called said 800 number and got voicemail. I left them a friendly message that their Air-Serv unit in Bandera was on the fritz, that I was with the newspaper, and that I was interested in doing a story to “give them some good press about how quickly they responded to the situation.”

We’ll see if they call back.

In the interim, you fine folks help me keep an eye on that Air-Serv at Shell to make sure it isn’t at any given time flooding Main Street. If it is, just pull the little squeezer until it stops, then call the 800 number and remind them to fix it – and to call James at the paper about the story.

It only takes a few minutes to make a difference.

Have any stories to share about witnessing water waste in action? Drop me an e-mail, comment below, or call/text me at 830-688-1564.

I’ll see you fine folks at tonight’s Bandera Lady Bulldogs vs. Fredericksburg volleyball match. Looking at the Bandera ISD Google Calendar, varsity plays at 5 p.m. Should be a fun match.

I’ll be off to Fort Worth tomorrow and Thursday for a web journalism workshop at Texas Christian University. Wish me luck as I point my Chevy north for five straight hours up I-35. The TCU campus is just beautiful and I always enjoy cussing and discussing the industry with fellow community journalists from across the Texas Press Association membership.

Friday I’ll head south to Hondo for the Bulldogs’ match-up against the Owls. Hard to believe football season is already drawing toward a close. Here’s hoping I stay busy with playoff games into the distant future!

As always you can follow my travels via Twitter @BanderaOutlaw or simply by visiting Bandera.net and admiring the sweet Twitter feed to your right.

Before I was on Twitter, I joked with people that I should join so I could post game scores for the other two Bandera County tweeple. I have since humbly realized that we have a huge local Twitter representation and that I’m apparently the one way late to the scene.

Thanks for being my tweep.

😀

Both Bandera County papers have hit the streets and the net. What are your picks for the stories of the week and why?

Community Journalism is my passion, and I’m always interested to hear what other Bandera County residents think of the coverage of the two local papers.

Leave a comment below on this blog post, hit me up on Twitter @banderaoutlaw, e-mail James@team-outlaw.net, or call/text me at 830-688-1564.

I’m really enjoying what Jimmy Monroe, Emily King, and the Bulldog Times staff are putting out with their online edition. Lots of video content and the freshness that student journalism has to offer.

Multimedia is the future of journalism whether or not us ink-stained wretches are happy about it. I’ve always been a tech- and net-friendly guy, so I for one am excited about the new opportunities unfolding for delivering news and storytelling in new and important ways.

I’ve long advised the journalism classes at Bandera and Medina both on camera gear purchases, and have even given presentations to the Bandera class. It’s always great to see how students new to the game of journalism interpret and present their news.

I’m a journalism junkie and just finished watching the entire first season of The Paper on iTunes. If you want to see what high school journalism is like at the largest high school in the country, it’s a great documentary put on by MTV.

Some other favorite TV and movie interpretations of journalism include State of Play with Russel Crowe (which I rented recently over at Video Outlet), The Wire’s final season, and of course the old TV show Lou Grant.

The dead-tree newspapers of Bandera County have anything but multimedia or social media on their minds, so at this point, the Bulldog Times is leading the local path toward Journalism 2.0.

(Bulldog Cheerleader Senior Co-Captain Holly Garwood’s response to reporter Randi Thomas’ question about what the cheer team has learned “after a hard year” is priceless: “Our team has learned what not to do.” Love it!)