(Note: Joan's taking the lead on writing this one, so imagine her speaking :-)
As we'd crossed over from Louisiana, Texas felt just a little bit more like home. Wide open spaces. Hills dotted with oak trees and brown grasses. Good Mexican food. Etc. Etc. And we made it feel even more like home by spending our time there hopping between friends and family.
Houston, TX - Matt Joss
We rolled into Houston and Matt, our oldest, took us to an epic Pakistani restaurant, Himalaya, that was just packed to the gills with happy diners. This is a restaurant that Anthony Bourdain once enjoyed, but it's just a tiny place in a strip mall along the freeway. Matt CLEARLY knows his way around Houston. :-). It was great to savor those flavors we craved, but even better to find Matt so at home in Houston.
Unfortunately, after dinner we headed back to Matt’s apartment and chose the absolute WORST place to park Doris. The tires dipped into this huge mud puddle/bog with Doris listing almost 20 degrees to the starboard. She wouldn't go forwards or backwards and was stuck up to the door sill in mud! There no way we could sleep in the van, but more importantly we were both terrified she would tip over and we'd lose her!
After a sleepless night on Matt’s couch we Uber'd to Home Depot and bought 2 shovels and a shop vac. We painstakingly vacuumed up close about 150 gallons of water, then painstakingly dug the mud out from around each wheel. Luckily that's when Matt’s friends came to the rescue with a classically large Texas truck and a tow rope. After a little internet research to figure out how to attach the tow rope to Doris (and how to get her into low gear!) it took just 15 seconds to pop us up out of the mud. Phew!
The rest of the weekend was much less stressful and much more fun. We spent it thrifting, visiting art galleries and taking in the diversity of Houston while just hanging with our beautiful boy. We also decided that Monday was "Take Your Parents To Work" day and he graciously toured us around his workplace -- the new ION building near the Rice campus.
Austin, TX - Dripping Springs & Arkansas Bend
Next, Dripping Springs, a little town in the hill country west of Austin served up a few gorgeous sunsets and the good hiking we were craving. There is a lot of Ash Juniper and small cacti which is a different landscape than we've experienced. It's dry and crowded but we enjoyed it nonetheless. Apparently the juniper is non-native, but has been around so long that it feels native. It certainly seems to take over!
The highlight in Dripping Springs though was popping in to Austin to have dinner with our former neighbors, Ashley and Tyler and their three kids. We have a soft spot for this family because their kids Jack, Chip and Annie seem like a Xerox copy of our own kids (except 12 years younger). We caught up on all of their activities and realized that they were doing just fine without any of the parenting advice we had been giving them in Menlo Park! (Who woulda thunk?)
Austin proper is a cool city with live music, good food and some fun shops. While having a beer, outside on the popular South Congress St, we noticed not one but two different couples with wedding photographers following them.
The first looked like an engaged couple holding hands dressed in urban cowboy wear and the second was a couple who just got hitched strolling down the sidewalk. On top of that there was a high school senior and accompanying photographer who kept running out during breaks in traffic to take what must have been her senior photo. It made for an entertaining beer!
Matt recommended Rainey Street in Austin for our evening outing and it was pulsing with music, mini skirts and cowboy boots. Which means that Randy and I were older than everyone by about thirty years! And it didn't help that the hostess sat us at the same table with the only 4 other people in the restaurant that were over 30. . . Wow, that was depressing! In fact, because of all that we decided that it was appropriate to "treat" ourselves to a $10 donut at Gordough's a food truck we stumbled upon. He'll never say so, but I think Randy might consider that donut to be the best part of Austin. :-)
In addition to the hiking in Dripping Springs though we also got in some gorgeous sunsets and a little bit of golf. We'd go back there in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately the state park we were camped at in Dripping Springs couldn't take us for the weekend, so we had to split our Austin stay up and camp the last 3 nights north of the city at a place on Lake Travis called Arkansas Bend. If you don't know Lake Travis it is a dammed up section of the Colorado River. It's a great Austin playground that Randy had been to before with his business school roommates. . . .but it's pretty low on water these days.
We arrived on a Friday night to the nice new state park. We had high schoolers across from us and a family with four kids next door, which sent up a red flag about possible late night noise from the teens and early morning ruckus from the youngsters. Not to worry though. The teens were delightful and their parents arrived the next morning to help them clean up. The family of 6 enjoyed their pancakes at a reasonable hour and then were off for a hike. It seemed like an omen for a perfect day.
Randy set off for a run and I had a map of the trails and headed off for a hike. Several hours later I find myself TOTALLY lost. I hadn't run into a soul anywhere and I proceeded to cry. Thank goodness an ATV with two guys named Sergio rode by and I was able to convince them to give me a lift out of the juniper hell! They reassured me that I wasn't the first person to get lost there and I felt a bit better, but not much. Needless to say, the next morning's exercise was different. I just ran intervals on the boat ramp steps with a view of the lake. Safer to stay in one spot!
Dallas, TX
Making our way through the maze of construction on the freeways surrounding Dallas we arrived at Randy's old roommate Adam's new digs in Frisco. As luck would have it he lives right across from the the Frisco Roughriders' AA baseball stadium. Too bad it wasn't baseball season yet.
After meeting his terrific partner Dominique and their 2 dogs and 2 cats we headed for a BBQ dinner. We had dinner at Hutchins' BBQ and were blown away. We hadn't had meat that good since Charleston and were wowed by the Texas twinkies and melt in your mouth ribs and brisket. In Randy's mind this won for best bbq of the trip, though I'm still not sure. After catching up on all of Adam's news we retired to Doris right outside of the gates of the stadium, on the street, happy campers.
Unfortunately we forgot to take a picture with Adam and Dominique, but this old picture of Adam will have to do. Randy says, "When you're that good looking any old picture will do!"
Gunter, Texas
Next we meandered our way further north, eventually landing in the town of Gunter to visit my cousin Paul and his wife Cathy. They have just built a fantastic new home with a casita off the carport where we were happy to spend two nights. Paul is recently retired and gave us a tour of the large work barn he built where he builds pretty much anything and keeps out of Cathy's way. He was planting an array of veggies in the raised beds when we pulled in and was tending to the smoked brisket he had on the smoker.
Cathy is a busy one too, she works with newborns and moms as an OB nurse but is recovering from shoulder surgery 2 months ago so she's been home bound for a while. EVEN SO, that girl, with a single arm, whipped up a cheesecake for my birthday dinner that night which was INSANE! We dined by their new pool, caught up on all the family gossip and were treated to a beautiful sunset. The next day we went antiquing, got the tour of Gunter and again were spoiled by an incredible, one-armed, homemade meal that night. I feel blessed to have been able to spend time with family that I had really never much time with. Paul's infectious laugh sounded just like my Uncle Howard's and that brought back fond memories of the twins Howard and Hal (my dad) laughing together. Priceless.
Ok, we have to explain that last foto, because you can't really tell what's going on. When Paul goes on car trips to his place in Arkansas Cathy likes to send him with some of his favorite dessert, German Chocolate cake. Except that she wants it to last the whole drive, so she'll freeze it and then set it on the dashboard when he leaves. That way it'll be perfect to eat by the time he arrives. Brilliance! . . . Well she found out that German Chocolate cake is also Randy's favorite dessert, so she stashed a piece on our dashboard before we left. Couldn't have been a better goodbye present!
As we left Gunter, there were thunderstorms and hail rolling in from the west and the debate was whether or how to try to outrun the predicted 60 mile an hour winds. We decided to take our chances and run for the Wichita Mountains only to get stuck in Wichita Falls, Texas. The rain was coming down hard so we "called an audible" (an expression I'd never heard before, but apparently it's a football thing) and we ducked into a Reflexology shop and got foot massages. We followed that up by going to the movies to see "80 for Brady" at a bargain price (matinee + senior discount). It's ok being old sometimes!
While driving around Wichita Falls we happened on a Mexican restaurant with a packed parking lot, so we quickly turned in for a margarita and tacos. The gal across from us complimented my glasses and asked if we were from out of town . . . and next thing you know Tricia and Joe are chatting us up over drinks! It turns out they are the in-laws of Sonny Dykes the former head football coach at Cal and the current head Football coach at TCU (national champ runner up this year)! They were very interested in our trip, they love golf, and they miss visiting California. They were a hoot! We invited them to visit if they ever did get back to the bay area. Hopefully we'll see them someday soon.
As we've said many times, a highlight of this trip has been the folks we meet and talk to, from the Niagara-on-the-Lake to Wichita Falls, they've enriched our days and our journey.
That's my thought for the day!
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