San Marcos — Cathy Dillon leads the way out the back door of the Crystal River Inn, down a long sidewalk into a covered courtyard, accented by a small coy fish pond and a lush garden alongside it. She stops to gather her thoughts.

There’s a funny story about this specific spot. One that has a lot to do with where she is today.

Looking across the courtyard, Dillon can’t help but reflect on the bed and breakfast that’s meant so much to her and husband Mike since they moved from Houston to San Marcos in 1984.

“I still remember we were driving around with a Realtor (looking for a home in San Marcos) and she pointed to this house and said ‘this one’s for sale.’ I said ‘oh no, it’s right on a main street. Eww.’ She told me I ought to look at it anyway, so we did,” Cathy said.

She walked in and out of the house that day, ending up in the very same courtyard. It’s here where she first fell in love with the house at 326 West Hopkins, a place she would soon call home. A place her kids would soon call home. And a place filled with hundreds of memories, stories and happy weekend guests for years to come.

“We went back to Houston and two days later, I was standing in the shower, mulling over everything that we’d seen, and all the sudden, I went ‘that’s it! We’ll open up a bed and breakfast,” Cathy said. “It was your basic eureka moment. And what did it for me was this particular spot.”

The next day they called the Realtor, set up a contract and within months had opened the Crystal River Inn, a local bed and breakfast that is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. The inn is one of the two oldest continually run bed and breakfasts in the state, launching at a time when bed and breakfasts were a trend out in California: Hardly the norm in Central Texas.

But the Dillons found a simple formula that’s worked for years: Providing guests with a good time and a relaxing weekend away.

“Early on, people would knock on the door, and come in and ask questions like ‘what is this thing, bed and board? Bath and Bed? Breakfast in bed? What is this place,” Mike recalls. “When we first started, not counting Jefferson, I think we were one of five bed and breakfasts in Texas.”

Prior to moving to the Hill Country, Mike was working in real estate and Cathy was a nurse. Cathy also ran a pacemaker monitoring clinic and was routinely traveling across the United States week to week. The couple longed to settle down, stay at home for more than a day at a time, and raise a family somewhere in the Hill Country.

After they found out they’d soon be adopting their first daughter, Sarah, they knew a move away from Houston was inevitable.

“We knew we didn’t want to raise a child in Houston,” Cathy said. “For several years we’d been coming up to San Marcos once or twice a month to play at the river or visit my cousin (Judy Allen). We were sort of antsy (in Houston).”

Once they found their home on Hopkins St. — and began plans for a bed and breakfast — several crazy months ensued. They moved in January 1984 to a home that was “pretty scruffy:” Walls had to be painted, rooms had to be cleaned up and a wall had to be cleared in front of the front stairwell. Their daughter was due in early March.

“I saw a list one time of the 10 most stressful things in life, and we had four or five of those in one spot,” Mike said. “But we were happy to be in the Hill Country, happy to be able to stay at home.”

At a little after midnight on Feb. 14 — the day that the two essentially began work on the house — Sarah was born early and the Dillons embarked on a new life. They remodeled a house and raised a child who quickly became oblivious to the roar of chain saws and the banging of hammers. The couple has since adopted two more children, Tatiana and Alexey.

“We were totally new in town. We had new jobs, new cars, new life, new child, new everything,” Cathy said. “We had left everything we’d been doing for so many years, and moved here to do this whimsical thing. Who knew it would work so well?”

Their first guests arrived in July that year.

“I remember we had two different guests that first night. The first couple had to be up in Austin at 8:30 a.m., so we fed them a wonderful meal at 7:30 a.m.,” Mike said. “The other couple was sleeping in and didn’t eat until 11.”

The two were so exhausted after cooking the first meal, they went upstairs and went back to sleep.

“Around 10, we were dragging each other out of bed, and we ended up cooking the second couple something entirely different,” Mike said.

Business was good that first year. Cathy and Mike did all the cooking and cleaning, and lived in the main house with their new baby. Business was so good, in fact, according to the business model they created, the Crystal River Inn was attracting as much business after the first year that the Dillons had anticipated for the end of the fifth year. Weekends throughout the year remained booked as more Texans became acquainted with a bed and breakfast.

For all the romance a bed and breakfast provides, running one is far from it. As Cathy warns, it’s not for the faint of heart. Air conditioners go out. Meals must be cooked day to day. Lights go out and roofs leak and sheets must be washed daily.

“It seems glamorous, but when you get down to it it’s cooking and cleaning,” Mike said. “One thing you have to remember, too, is that this is a 120 year old house... there’s a certain charm to that to a certain extent. But there’s nothing charming about 9:30 p.m. when the air conditioning is not working and you’re about to lose a guest.”

But their labor remained that of pure love. The staff has grown from the Dillons to 12 staff members, and the inn has multiplied from the main house to three buildings and 12 rooms holding up to 34 people. To keep business going, they’ve incorporated special getaway packages like “Ladies’ Escape,” “Winter Romance” packages and the popular Murder Mystery weekends.

“I remember the first murder mystery that Mike and I flushed out. It was 8 p.m. an I’m madly typing somewhere trying to finish the story, and in comes this huge thunderstorm and we lost electricity,” Cathy said. “Everything ended up fine, and everyone enjoyed themselves. This famous travel writer at the time, Ann Ruff, happened to be there that weekend, and she went home and wrote a story about our murder mystery and published it in Continental Airlines Magazine. And that’s what really launched us... Now we do between six and 10 a year.”

The Crystal River Inn has also diversified in recent years by embracing business travelers during weeknights, many of whom come from Texas State University. Guest rooms now come equipped with phones and wireless Internet and TVs, something the “romantic” crowd could care less about years ago. The Dillons have also started concentrating much more on weddings, which they host under a tent in their outdoor garden.

“Along came the economic downturn which took away a good percentage of the weekend city-escapee travelers,” Cathy said. “So it was easy to ramp up our event business and now it's a very substantial part of the reason we're thriving when so much of the B&B; industry is not.”

But from the beginning, the Dillons have had not just another business in the city, but one that’s a strong part of the community. Evidence of that came in August 2005 just days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Knowing that hundreds of evacuees had been moved to San Antonio, Cathy made a trip down herself. She had extra beds to spare.

“We had a lot of empty rooms and I thought rather than them being stuffed in there, I figured we could bring one nice family and house them here,” Cathy said. “I wandered through that large room (Kelly Field Annex) talking to people, and found this family, which turned out to be 19 people.”

The next weekend, Labor Day weekend, Cathy brought several family members to the St. John’s Fiesta. Eventually that night, the family found themselves on stage being introduced. The crowd went wild, stuffing money into their hands. Cathy was astonished with the outpouring from the community.

“Two days later, you could barely walk through the backyard (at the Inn) and the garage area from all the stuff people around town had brought for the family,” Cathy said.

The Dillons ended up housing 53 Hurricane Katrina victims, and from there Cathy started the Starfish project, which found housing, jobs, transportation and food for more than 250 evacuees, many of which remain in San Marcos today. Mike and Cathy know because they see them regularly around town.

Her husband praises her efforts with such special projects, but Cathy simply smiles and says she’s glad to help. She calls the Starfish Project and the adoption of three children simply “God things,” something that a higher voice is directing her to do.

Such episodes, after all, aren’t too unlike all those memories and stories at 326 W. Hopkins in 25 years, and the countless weekend guests they’ve hosted at the Crystal River Inn.

“”Having the inn all these years is actually fairly similar if less intense,” Cathy said. “Our purpose is to bring enjoyment to people who for whatever reason need it at that very moment.”