July 3rd - July 6th
Houston
to Austin
I-10 tp 71to I-35
Woke up the next morning, checked our email, packed up the car and head out. Drove through Houston and across the plains of Texas. Arrived in Austin just before 5pm.
We were staying with a friend of mine, Lisa. She's another ex-hotjobber; one of the first 5 people who worked there and was my first mentor. I was the third customer service representative, she was the first.
Her place is gorgeous. She lives in an apartment complex in downtown Austin. The complex is quite mod and pleasing to the eyes. It has a gym, a swimming pool, cute courtyards and central/automatic everything. Her apartment is a large loft/studio with a spiral staircase up to her room. She also has a greyhound. Grammercy was very territorial and for some reason wouldn't let either James or myself go near the garbage - go figure! Cute dog though.
We went out for some food around the corner. Ranch 616 was (as Vindigo says) a 'glorified diner'. It served wonderful Mexican food and the service was great. When we got back to the apartment, Lisa had to take her dog down to the dog park. Grammercy nearly got into a scuffle with another dog - it was becoming apparent that the dog had been abandoned or abused earlier in life. I just don't understand how people can be so inhuman to animals. It's despicable.
That evening we just chilled out at home, chat and caught up on our email.
Wednesday, July 04, 2001
Austin, TX
After a slow start, we explored Austin in Lisa's VW Cabriolet. First we drove to downtown Austin and saw the Capitol Building. Then we drove through the campus of the University of Texas, which is headquartered in Austin. We had lunch at Chuy's, a great eclectic Tex-Mex place. After that was Mt. Bonnel, the tallest peak in Austin. From there you could see all across Austin; downtown and the Colorado River, which is lined by gorgeous mansions.
After that we drove to Bull Creek. Practically right in town, it was a cute
little creek. Families were having picnics and swimming in the creek. We sat
down there for a while wishing that we could swim but being cooled by the
shade. That's what I love about this heat. It may be really hot but you can
always get shelter from it in the shade.
Next stop was McKinney Falls State Park. It was a bit further out of town (13 miles) and had some little waterfalls that again were frequented by families spending a relaxing 4th of July swimming in the water.
We stayed in that evening and went up to the roof to see the fireworks. It was quite nice; most of the tenants were on the roof enjoying beers and the cool evening. The fireworks were very nice. Nothing compared to the Macy's fireworks in New York but fireworks are always fun anyway.
Thursday, July 5th
Austin, TX
Lisa and I ran some errands on our way to Barton Creek. James was going to meet us there for a day of swimming. Unfortunately when we got there, the pool was closed. We had picked up some lunch and decided to eat it while we waited for James. When we were finished and James still hadn't arrived, we went back to the apartment. He wasn't there and he had the keys. We waited a while but were dying from the heat so we went back to Barton Creek, saw my car but no James. At this point we were so hot, we left him a note that we would be at a public pool down the road. James eventually met us there and we spent a wonderful afternoon, cooling off in the pool and lounging on the grass.
For dinner, we had some genuine Texas BBQ. From the outside the place looked very plain. On the inside it was nothing special but felt like the real deal. There was a 2-man band playing great country rock. I had a Texan beer and BBQ baby-back ribs. What do they say? While in Rome, do as the Romans do…or something like that.
Lisa and I dropped James off at home and head out on the town. First she took me a bar that brewed their own beer. I had a pink cactus beer. Next was her local coffee shop, which had a terrible band playing music that pierced through my eardrums. Luckily, we sat outside and people watched.
After that we went over to 6th Street, the college bar area. For about 4 blocks there was bar after bar after bar. Anything you could think of and all really cheesy. We did manage to find a cool place though and stopped in to have a drink. The doorman was obviously happy to have women in the place so he took us to the bar and got us a free drink - little did he know that we were only having one. We sat at the open windows and watched the people go by - quite a crowd. I guess I would have loved it had it been a couple of years ago and I was in college. We had our drinks and decided to head to a jazz club. On our way, we saw the local anti-society freak. He goes around downtown with a trolley covered in cardboard. On the cardboard he has written stuff all about the police. It was quite interesting.
The jazz club was great. It was in a basement and there was a great band playing; drums, guitar, piano, trombone, 2 saxophones and a trumpet. We had a couple of drinks and chilled to the music and head home after that.
Friday, July 6th
Austin to Fort Stockton to Quadelupe National Park
I-35 to 290 to I-10 to 349 to I-10 to 54 to 180
Before we left town, James and Lisa head down to Barton Creek and took a dip. We head out of the city and into the abyss of the Texan landscape. The first couple of miles weren't so bad. There were a couple of towns to keep us occupied but it soon got barren. A couple of hours later, it was really barren. Absolute nothingness for miles and miles. We had planned to do the trip in 2 days but when we got about half way, we realized that there really wasn't anywhere to stay so we just kept on going. Just before we got to Fort Stockton, we got pulled over by the police patrol. Guess what? It was a speeding fine; James was doing 88 mph in a 70 zone. It's so easy to do on a straight road that seems to go nowhere. Anyway, he had to pay the fine on the spot. Otherwise he would be detained until Monday to see a judge because he is not a US resident. The cops followed us to the next gas station; he bought a money order and paid the fine. $93, I might add - that's nearly 3 days for us!
We noticed on the map that there was a campsite to the south of us. There was also a huge storm too. We got off the road to head down to it, but realized how stupid that idea was. We were heading straight into the storm and the Interstate was heading straight into the sunset. Storm…sunset?
Needless to say, we got back on the Interstate and carried on driving. We had a while to go to get to anything else, but it was kinda nice driving in the cool of night.
Finally around 11:30 at night, we hit our 2nd time zone change so now it was actually 10:30pm. It also marked our entrance into the Guadelupe National Park. It was hard to find a campsite in the dark, but we finally found a group one that had only one tent on it. We weren't sure if we were allowed to setup next to these people but at that time of night, we really didn't care.
It was really windy at the base of the Guadelupe Mountains. I fell asleep quite well but throughout the night got woken up with the side of the tent being blown in my face!