California or Bust…
Day 5 & 6 – Austin, Texas
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011
We left Beaumont, Texas around 9:30am and proceeded West on I-10 and then took Hwy 290 West just North of Houston, avoiding the crazy traffic, to head towards Austin about 230 miles. We plan to stay a couple of nights so that we can take in the sites of Austin and also visit friends Kyle and Lanae. The drive was easy taking us through East Central Texas over rolling cedar tree covered hills. The quaint rural towns were sparsely populated but always had at least one mercantile store and several antique shops. Unfortunately with the lack of rain, the farms and pastures were very brown… not much green for the cattle and horses to munch on. It’s crazy to think that just before we left the Keys, we had 25” of rain in ten days and this area of Texas is down 25” for the entire year.
There were a couple of RV park options in Austin, but I had not made a prior reservation and when we called to check availability for a space at the highest rated park, there was no vacancy… uh oh. We, in general, have no problem with a reservation and most times the RV Parks tell us we don't need one. The Oak Forest RV Park had one space they keep on hand for this kind of a situation and we had a place to stay. Not as nice as the overnight pull through slabs, but good enough. We settled in and waited for our friends Lanae & Kyle Hauser to come by for a visit and go out to dinner. Kyle and Lanae lived in the Florida Keys and would stay at our house to dog, cat & Maye sit while we were out of town. They moved to Austin a couple of years ago to pursue careers and Kyle to further his architectural design and education… sounds like he is still trying to figure that out. They suggested authentic Mexican food… no arguments from us… and we went to Chuy’s, an Austin favorite... Drew got the t-shirt. We all had Texas-tinis… and enjoyed chicken enchiladas with cilantro cream sauce and my favorite, chili rellenos. Silly Kyle and beautiful Lanae are a lot of FUN, we wished we could have spent more time with them.
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| Kyle & Lanae :o) |
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| Chuy's in Austin |
Thursday, October 27th, 2011 –
The weather forecast had a cold front moving in to the Austin area… with highly anticipated rain. Lanae joked the night before that “it won’t rain”… it never rains. The temperature dropped in the mid 60’s so with an umbrella and coats in hand (which we ultimately did not need and should have listened to Lanae), we took a taxi in to Austin. Our first stop was to find Maria’s Taco Express off South Lamar Blvd. which we had seen on Diner’s, Drive-In’s and Dive’s… it was also recommened by our Marathon friend, Maria. It was difficult to make a decision because there were so many options… and everything sounded good. We asked a few of the locals what their favorites were and then placed our order… it was everything we had hoped for and more… what flavor!!!!
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| Maria's Taco Express |
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| We love DDD! |
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| Most excellent guac! |
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| Chicken fajita burrito... everything was so good! |
We took a taxi back to the KeyZRV… the dogs were happy to see us, Drew napped for a bit and I did a little office work and relaxed. Due to the lack of rain across Texas, there is a “no burn” ordianance in effect which meant that we could not barbeque outside. Of course, we came well prepared with plenty of food to cook inside, on the grill or in the crockpot. So tonight we made a sausage, sundried tomato and onion pizza on a whole wheat Boboli pizza shell and paired it with a nice red wine… can’t complain about that!
Tomorrow we drive the West half of Texas…
I am soooooooooooo jealous, I haven't been to Austin in years, I used to travel through there every year for SXSW when I worked for the record label. It's a great town, pretty sure I'm not the only person living vicariously through you!
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