Country Fever

Map Route

Nick catching his breath at the top of Enchanted Rock

After looking at Texas' capitol we drove from Austin toward San Antonio. We drove along Texas Hill Country road with our first stop being Pedernales Falls State Park. We walked out to look at the falls and then went to the swimming area. After being in the hot motor home we were looking forward to some refreshing water. We were sadly disappointed to find that the water was lukewarm. The river felt more like bath water, which I'm sure would be nice at night but not in the scorching noon sun. We paddled around the murky waters then continued on to LBJ state park. By the time we got there the park center was closed but we followed the map and drove around looking at the living history barn and church. We made our way to the Enchanted Rock State Park. The park is for the rock formations, the largest rock of entirely pink granite. We followed the path through overgrown bushes, cactus, and flowers to the base of the mountain. Natalie and I, naively in flip flops, hiked to the summit. The hike was very steep. Ominously, vultures circled over us as we neared the summit. The mountain seemed to be getting more steep with each step, we came over a ridge to find a dozen vultures sitting and watching us. Luckily we pulled through and the view was worth it. The sun was setting over the valley which created more of a pink glow on the granite. The rock is said to be enchanted because there is a buzzing noise at the top from the mass contracting and expanding. We laid on the top and felt the earth around us, listening to the buzz of "spirits".  We got up and hiked back down before it got pitch black and wandered our way back to the motor home for the night.

Enchanted Rock

Pink granite of Enchanted Rock

In the morning we woke up and drove to the Museum of Western Art in Kerrville, there they had life size iron sculptures of cowboys and horses outside with miniature ones inside. We walked around looking at all of the country paintings, stagecoach wagons, and horse saddles. We then drove on to the Lost Maples State Park. This is an area where Maple trees grow because the park is shaded by canyon walls and river runs through providing water for the maples. We walked down the Maple Grove along the river. After a quick hike we drove to Garner State Park, we only drove through to see tons of people camping and floating in the Frio (cold) river. We didn't have enough time to stay as we were trying to make it to Houston. We drove on and through Bandera, the cowboy capitol of Texas. Sadly no hot cowboys were waiting in the streets for us, so we continued through to San Antonio. In San Antonio we went to the Alamo and then did the famous River Walk. the sidewalk follows along with the river on one side and restaurant on the other. It was really cool thing to see, there were a lot of people and there were river tour boats going by. We left and headed upstairs back to the main street level. We drove to Houston, all while watching a lightening storm that lit up the whole sky. The lightening crackled across the sky looking like a root system. In Houston we parked and slept for the long drive.

Alicia and Natalie at the Alamo

Indian sculpture at the Museum of Western Art

Natalie and Nick on the River Walk in San Antonio, TX

4th of July!!! We left Houston early and drove to Galveston, TX- an island in the Gulf of Mexico we reached by bridge. We somehow found free parking and made our way to the beach which was packed for the fourth of July. We claimed a piece of white sand and made our way to the brown, seaweed infested waters. The water was cool and refreshing as we swam and body surfed the small waves. After laying out to dry off we took the ferry across back to the mainland. We drove to Louisiana, the highways are mainly bridges over swamps. We drove through Baton Rouge, one of the more green city we have seen (from tons of trees). We made it into New Orleans, and after getting lost down some road by the train tracks we were beginning to feel uneasy. Where we had accidentally drove to looked like a movie set for a rape/murder/ torture road, one where nobody would find our bodies for a month at least. After redirecting ourselves we made it far away from the creepy zone and to the campground. The campground, Pontchartrain Landing, is on the marina, and had their own fireworks display that we saw go off over the Pontchartrain Lake. We took a cab to Bourbon Street to experience the night life and boy were we out of our element. The first thing you notice when walking up the street is the mass amounts of people and the crazy things they're doing (not as much flashing going on as I'd had imagined) then the smell hits you. There was a constant smell of shit all the along Bourbon Street, but the smell changed as you went along to more of a pee smell, then more of a vomit smell, to more of a rotten food smell. This was not a smell any normal person could get used to. We walked the streets trying to avoid running into all of the people and not step in small puddles of mystery brown liquid. This time it was Nick and I that had wore sandals which is not something I would suggest to anyone. We went inside Bayou Burgers for bite. We got Gator Traps- deep fried alligator with jalapeno cheese, and the ultimate hamburger that had a grilled cheese bacon sandwich within it. We continued along the streets, I honestly didn't feel comfortable enough to drink anything because I felt hyper aware of everything going on around. When we made it to a cross street we decided to turn back and walk the other direction. We had made it 20 feet before we saw a wall of people barreling towards us. Like the Lion King we were about to get ran over by a stampede. Everyone was screaming and you could see pure fear in their eyes, something that reflected back in ours. One girl yelled into my face that there were gunshots and we needed to get out of there. We turned and ran as fast as we could so we didn't get trampled to death. We made it to the crossroad and turned, some girl grabbed mine and Natalie's arms and pulled us to the side. She said to calm down and that nothing was going on. She had lived there forever and goes to Bourbon Street all the time and she said this was a regular occurrence. She said that we shouldn't run and just step out of the way unless we actually hear the gunshots. This wasn't really an option for us, if we had tried to move out of the way we would have been knocked down just like the homeless man that was cowering on the ground covering his dog. My heart had finally stopped pounding and the crowd had cleared so we made our way back down the street. After the stampede tons of policemen were out riding their horses, we came along a huge group of people bunched together. We didn't know what was going on in the middle, but a police officer riding a horse rode through the group with the horse swaying back and forth to break the group up. When this happened it created a lot of commotion people screaming again and jumping out of the way of the horse and other people. In this process my foot got smashed by a large man and I was officially done with New Orleans. We caught a cab back home and called it at night at 12am. I can honestly say I will never go back to Bourbon Street as the craziness is a normal thing there, I cannot imagine what Mardi Gras is like. Tomorrow we will got to Frenchmen Street- a place where locals go that is "very calm" and more artsy with live Jazz music. Hopefully we won't get trampled.

Alicia and Natalie on Bourbon Street

Bayou along Hwy 10 in Louisiana

Quote:
       "The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown."

From the Land of Enchantment to the Lone Star State



Map Route

Right now I've been having issues loading pictures, it seems to only load some pictures if I size them down really small and others load fine, so I apologize for the quality.

We woke up in Taos and went to a local pottery store that had everything from rugs, to glassware, to mirrors. All of the items had a Spanish design.We loved everything in the store and it was so large we spent over an hour looking at all of the items. I bought a blanket with birds on it and some small Terra-cotta tiles to make into a picture frame. We continued on to the day's itinerary, we drove along the enchanted circle, a drive that winds through pines of Carson Nat'l forest and some ski resort towns, circling Wheeler Peak (the tallest Mt. in NM). We also drove around Eagle's Nest Lake then came full circle back to Taos. We headed south toward Santa Fe, where we went to White Rock overlook, a view of the Rio Grande. We got into Santa Fe around 5pm, we found a parking lot and paid for overnight parking. We walked the streets of down town Santa Fe until we found a Mexican restaurant. We got dinner and drinks at the Blue Corn Cafe. This is the first location that I had issues with my California driver's licence. My licence is vertical (an easy sign of someone under 21), I never got a new ID because California gave me the ID a month before my 21st, and I didn't see a reason to pay for another seeing as if someone actually looked at my ID they would see that I am over 21. At the Blue Corn Cafe, the waiter had to have his manager look at my ID before they could serve me. Of course nothing was wrong so I got my drink. The food was amazing!! We left the restaurant to find a bar to hang out in for the night. There was a mariachi band- all ladies, and they were really good. We stopped on the street to listen to them, along with the ever growing crowd. We listened to couple songs then went to a bar for a live band. We had got a flyer earlier for the band playing at the Underground. Here I ran into an issue again with my vertical licence, they actually wouldn't let me in to the bar. They didn't accept any vertical ID's. Luckily I had my passport in the motor home otherwise we would have had to call it a night. Natalie and I got our passports specifically for this trip that way we could take a day ferry to the Bahamas while in Florida. The bar in Santa Fe had the band playing downstairs and was really dark and had a strange vibe to it. The music wasn't very good so after 30 minutes we decided we had better find somewhere else. We walked through Santa Fe streets admiring the items in the windows of the closed shops. Along the way we heard some music coming from a hotel bar. At the Palace they were doing karaoke and the people singing were so good that the music was actually enjoyable. Here I just used my passport and didn't try my ID. We enjoyed drinks and listened to the local talent. One guy sang a couple Bloodhound Gang songs which made us super happy- especially "The Ballad of Chasey Lain"  I got Nick and Natalie to sing "Holy Diver" by Dio which was hilarious because neither of them really knew the song. I was laughing so hard that tears were rolling down my face. At the end of the night we walked back to our home.


Alicia and Natalie at White Rock Overlook

Singing ladies in Santa Fe

Natalie laying on her new bird blanket

In the morning we went to a couple shops in Santa Fe looking for some gifts. After shopping for a little to long we started to drive to Albuquerque and stopped at another pottery store, this one was twice as big as the one in Taos. It had a a lot of the same things but also a lot of different items- I got a nude Frida painting. When we got to Albuquerque and it was beyond hot, so we decided to find some ice cream and after walking down the main street we found a diner to cool off in. We were not impressed by Albuquerque and preferred Santa Fe so we didn't stay to long. We drove to Amarillo, TX to stay at an RV park. As we entered Texas it was immediately humid and even hotter. The late night didn't do much as far as cooling us down.

Natalie loving on a pink dino in Albuquerque

We left Amarillo around 3:00 because we had laundry to do and Natalie had to re-dye her hair. The owner of the RV park said that it was normally not that humid but there was rain recently. He told us it's usually very dry. At this point I don't know what would be better. We were going to head to the WinStar Casino in Oklahoma then go to Dallas for a night on the town but on the drive we realized how late it was getting and decided to just head to Dallas. After finding a place to park for the night, and getting dressed we called a cab to take us to a club in downtown Dallas. The cab was supposed to take 15 min to get there but after 30 min we called, they said they were in route eventually after an hour of waiting we canceled. It was now 12:30 and we didn't want to pay to go somewhere for an hour, so we followed the sound of music to a bar a around the block. There was a guy playing acoustic guitar and singing alternative covers, he was really good so we stayed at the bar till close. We walked around the area then headed back to the motor home and called it a night.



Texas sure does love America

Natalie's worm

We woke up miserably hot in Dallas, after getting groceries we decided to drive to the WinStar casino, it's the largest casino in the world. The casino was amazing, each section is designed to look like a different country. There was Cairo with a sphinx and Beijing with crystal dragons. We walked through the casino and looked at the little shops, we got lunch at Toby Keith's Bar because our first option only open for dinner. At Toby Keith's the waitress thought it was one of our birthdays and gave us a free shot of tequila. It just happened to be the end of the bottle so the shot came with the worm. After some convincing Natalie drank the tequila worm. On our way back to Dallas we found a lake to swim at and got out of the heat. We went to Ray Roberts lake and laid on the beach and did some yoga in the sand. This lake has tons of Zebra Mussels so we found a lot of shells ranging from the size of a speck to a silver dollar. We played on the playground then used the campground showers before finishing the drive to Dallas.


Alicia in "Cairo"

Nick in "New York"

Again we woke up hot and hurried out of Dallas to Austin, TX.  We stopped at a boot outlet looking for some inexpensive cowboy boots but couldn't find any we wanted, and we stopped at a thrift store and got some cheap shorts. We made lunch at a park and went outside to sit under a tree to eat, in a matter of minutes we were covered in mosquitoes. We each had at least 10 on us and a swarm followed as we ran back to the motor home. We spent the next couple of minutes killing mosquitoes and decided eating inside was best. In Austin we found a parking lot that we could stay over night and walked the main street. We found tons of really cool bars. The first bar we went to Friends had live music with a really good rock band. The guitarist was walking through the building and behind the bar all while jamming. We decided to check more of the bars out and went next door to Bourbon Girl. The bartender was a really nice guy and gave Natalie and I extra drinks from what was left in the mixer. We talked to him about how we like Austin more than Dallas so far, so he got Nick an extra shot for free. We told him about our trip then he wrote down a couple places where we should go while in Austin. We played a bean bag toss game, a patron stumbled over and bought Nick a drink. He also joined us in the bean bag toss game. Before we left the bartender gave Natalie and I free drinks. We continued on down the streets stopping at the bars along the way. We got to a bar with a mechanical bull. I decided I would ride it since I was in Texas. The operator went easy on me because I told him to not break my neck. After that everyone wanted to buy us drinks, we continued on to other bars. At the end of the night we got a free ride back to our home from a bicycle taxi. We were all pretty smitten with Austin.



Alicia and Natalie at Bourbon Girl in Austin, TX



Alicia riding the Bull in Austin, TX

We woke up hating life- hungover and hot and the motor home was starting to smell. I honestly thought the smell was from lack of showers, it wasn't until later that day that we found it was the garbage from making dinner the night before. I left the motor home and walked through the streets looking for breakfast. All that was open was Starbucks. I got some fresh fruit and sat on the couch enjoying the AC. The owner saw me and asked if I was bored, I told him I was just tired and he gave me a Starbucks gift card. So far Austin was awesome, everyone had been so nice. We then went to Barton Springs, a park with access to the Colorado river to swim in. The bartender from the night before had told us about how awesome the place was. We floated on our raft and swam all day. At 6 we packed up and went back to the park. There we cooked dinner and had a picnic in the park. I read stories from our book until it got too dark to see. We packed up and went back to our parking lot in downtown Austin. We went to a couple bars but called it a night early. Tomorrow we will head to San Antonio and then to Houston.

Natalie chilling on the raft at Barton Springs in Austin, TX

Quote:
       "Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life" ~Michael Palin