By: Ashlea Halpern | From: AFAR

In the loosest geographic terms, the Hill Country is where South Texas, Central Texas, and West Texas meet. It’s where enormous live oaks and Ashe junipers flirt with dusty scrubland, where granite karsts rise like hunchbacks from the plains, where bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush festoon the landscape in a watercolorist’s daydream. Bound in by the Balcones Escarpment, the southeastern edge of the Hill Country starts just above San Antonio. After spending a day exploring Texas’s second most populous city, cut northwest toward Bandera and Uvalde counties, where you can sleep in a TV-famous tree house, explore the unspoilt Sabinal and Frio rivers by inner tube, and stuff yourself silly on tacos and country-fried steak.

This five-day excursion begins in San Antonio, home to the efficiently run San Antonio International Airport. Spend the first night in the city, the next three in the countryside. Can you hear the cicadas yet?

Day one: Shopping and taquerias

Grab a rental car and get thee to El Fish Demon, a brand-new Mexican seafood spot from chef-owner Alex Paredes, whose beloved taqueria, Carnitas Lonja, shuttered a few years ago. Expect a menu of bracingly refreshing ceviches, aquachiles, and cocteles, plus octopus tostadas and shrimp costras, which get a crusty blanket of griddled cheese.

In the hottest part of the afternoon, make like a Texan and seek out shops with air-conditioning. Fiesta On Main sells a broad array of colorful San Pablito and Otomo quilts, painted tin signs, and Día de los Muertos figurines. Cheever Books is loaded with rare first editions and autographed tomes, heavy on the Texana.

Making the museum rounds is another smart way to dodge the blistering heat: The San Antonio Museum of Art has a remarkable collection of ancient Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and Egyptian sculptures, plus creative traveling shows. The Briscoe Western Art Museum, meanwhile, covers five centuries of the American West, from the Spanish conquistadors to present day. Look for Apache-woven baskets, bronze sculptures by John Coleman, and a full-size replica of a Wells Fargo & Co. stagecoach.

After 3 p.m., drop your bags at the 146-room Hotel Emma, in the heart of San Antonio’s revitalized Pearl District, centered around a 19th-century brewery complex. The Roman and Williams–designed hotel was named after Emma Koehler, the CEO who ran the former brewery during Prohibition. Boutique touches include luxurious Frette linens, lavender bath salts from Los Poblanos, supple leather sofas contrasted with vintage kilim rugs, and mini-larders stocked with Topo Chico and Mexican Coke. Head down to the hotel library to indulge in a free welcome cocktail and canapés or go for a stroll along the Pearl’s handsomely manicured section of the ever-expanding River Walk.

In the late afternoon, drive over to the Japanese Tea Garden, a rock quarry turned green space with stone arch bridges, a lily pond, and a 60-foot-tall cascading waterfall. You’ll see turtles, ducks, koi, and wedding parties snapping photos.

Dinner has got to be at Ray’s Drive Inn, which celebrates its 70th birthday this year. The spot is the originator of the puffy taco, and carne guisada enveloped in a fresh-from-the-fryer crackly taco shell is the way to go. For dessert, loop north to El Paraiso, San Antonio’s first paletería. José Flores’s real-fruit pops take their inspiration from his Mexican home state of Zacatecas, as well as Guadalajara and Aguascalientes. The neon green pickle pop is sour and tangy, with bits of pickle skin floating in its frozen orbit. Sweeter teeth might prefer horchata, coconut, or pineapple.

Day two: More Mexican bites and Treehouse Utopia

After checking out of Hotel Emma, swing by La Panadería, an upscale Mexican bakery where the decadent tequila almond croissant deserves write-in nominations on election ballots and the vanilla conchas are so light and airy, you’d think they were filled with helium. From here, head to Boerne, and stop into Flashback Funtiques, which sells beautifully refurbished soda dispensers from the 1950s, mint-con Mobil gas signs, and larger-than-life Big Boy statues.

It’s another 70 minutes to Utopia, where you’ll be checking into your home base for the next three nights: Treehouse Utopia. To create the extraordinary riverfront property, the Texas-born chef and entrepreneur Laurel Waters teamed up with “tree whisperer” Pete Nelson of Treehouse Masters, a popular Animal Planet show about arboreal living. The quartet of homes include the Chapelle, which has a 25-foot steeple, stained glass, and decor rife with French ecclesiastical artifacts, and the Biblioteque, with wall-to-wall books.

The grounds are blessedly remote, yet centrally located to everything you’ll want to see and do in Uvalde and Bandera counties in the coming days, starting with a no-fuss dinner at Neals Dining Room in Concan. The family-owned café has been serving up chicken-fried steak, lima beans, buttered rolls, and yes-ma’am/no-ma’am hospitality since 1926.

Day three: Winetasting and one Twisted Sister

Start with breakfast at Lost Maples Cafe in Utopia, where the Redden family makes buttermilk pancakes the size of hubcaps. The building is notable, too: Dating to 1904, it has served as a Masonic lodge, a drugstore, a classroom, and a doctor’s office. Drive to Garner State Park, where you can tackle its 16 miles of scenic trails, rent fishing gear, or enter into the 30-foot-deep Crystal Cave.

Ten minutes north of the park, turn right onto Ranch Road 337. This is one of the Twisted Sisters, three routes widely considered the best motorcycle drives in the Hill Country. But even in a car, it’s a blast of a roller-coaster ride, winding past shallow creeks and under towering limestone bluffs.

Thirsty yet? Cool off at 187 North, a winery known for its Black Spanish Lenoir grapes, which trace their roots to Spain and were brought to Mexico to make communion wine. Pair the elegant, port-style wines with rustic dishes like chipotle-lime naked chicken wings and burgers topped with wine reduction.

Dinner tonight is at the Laurel Tree, back in Utopia, the restaurant where Treehouse Utopia co-owner Laurel Waters really shows off her Le Cordon Bleu training. The antiques-stuffed hideaway is open only on Saturdays, and reservations are essential. Waters grows many of her own vegetables and herbs, and her menu is seasonally inspired, with dishes that include tangy lemon-artichoke soup, sausage-stuffed quail, and clementine and sweet basil cake.

If you don’t snag a reservation or are in Utopia on a different night, note that dinner options in these parts are very limited; you may end up back at Lost Maples Cafe, where the dinner menu straddles the line between Mexican (enchiladas, chalupas) and Southern (chicken-fried steak, fried pickles).

Day four: Floating on the rio

Rise and shine and put on your finest swimming costume: Today you’re floating the Rio Frio, a spring-fed river that winds conveniently through Leakey and Concan. Many locals bring their own floats, but you can rent tubes or kayaks from Andy’s on River Road, a Concan-based outfitter that provides shuttles to pick-up and drop-off points.

Tubing is like one big river party. Coolers with built-in radios blast country and western and reggaeton songs. Folks are drinking and singing and flipping out of their floats for maximum Instagram laughs. You’ll bump tubes with strangers half a dozen times in the slower patches and that’s OK: Everyone is out here to have a good time.

The length of the trip depends on the water levels, but bank on three to six hours. For a post-float lunch, you can go with Bear’s Den in Leakey, a warehouse-like space with comfy couches and unfussy food such as brisket quesadillas and fried green beans with jalapeño ranch, or Hippie Chic’s River Shack, back in Concan, serving pizzas and cold beer.

Around 7:30 p.m., meet at the first gate south of the Frio River in Concan, about a third of a mile down FM 2690. Here you will find a real-life batman. Bain Walker has been leading the Frio Bat Flight tours for 27 years and knows everything there is to know about bats and their guano (used for fertilizers).

After paying for your tour (advance reservations recommended) and trailing Walker down a dusty gravel road through a 10,000-acre private ranch, you’ll schlep up a small hill, listen to his spiel about bats, and then wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, after the sun sinks over distant hills, they’ll appear—10 to 12 million of them, mostly ladies—racing like madness out of the cave and turning the pink sky above into a ribbon of black. Their en masse flight is spectacular to witness.

The night is still young though, so jump back in the car and drive 20 minutes north back to Garner State Park. It gets extra busy after dark thanks to its family-friendly jukebox dances. Folks of all ages have been gathering at this open-air pavilion on summer nights since the 1940s, with country and western shindigs held nightly until 11 p.m.

Day five: More tacos and back to San Antone

Bid adieu to the tree house of your dreams and hop onto scenic Ranch Road 187 toward Sabinal. Your final breakfast in Hill Country will no doubt be your best: Nora’s Tacos. The unimpeachable egg, potato, bacon, and cheese combo is the top choice if you’re craving a classic breakfast taco, although owner Nora Gomez has a huge blackboard menu of other options—queso flamenco, machacado, nopalitos—all of them absurdly tasty.

From Sabinal, pick up U.S. 90 East back to San Antonio. This leg takes about an hour without traffic, leaving you time to pack in more sightseeing. Visit San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, which encompasses four historic missions spaced about 2.5 miles apart. There are 10 miles of pedestrian-only trails connecting the missions, if you want to walk or rent a bike.

And don’t you dare board your plane home without sampling San Antonio’s absolute best barbecue: 2M Smokehouse, which has been recommended by Michelin and nominated for James Beard Awards. A pro order goes something like this: half a pound of brisket (“moist”), a quarter pound of juicy pulled pork, two big honkin’ pork ribs, a sausage spiked with Oaxaca cheese and serrano chilies, and sides of soupy borracho beans, chicharrón-topped macaroni and cheese, and pickled nopales. Arrive early to avoid a crazy line and the crushing disappointment of seeing the words Sold Out.