Travels with Dogs

We hit the road to Austin with full stomachs (see previous post about Meche's Donuts) and light hearts. I don't remember too much about the drive from Louisiana into Texas, but I do remember riding into Austin and thinking it looked interesting. And it was! We camped at McKinney Falls State Park and we stayed two nights, and were thinking we might stay a third. It looks like I didn't take picture of our campgrounds (record keeping is getting sloppy!) but it was nice, in the woods and as you will see from the pictures below - a great hiking path.

Harry was bemoaning that we had travelled through North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana and hadn't eaten any barbecue so I suggested we spend out first night in Austin remedying that. We chose Cooper's on Congress Street in Downtown Austin. Oh wait, I'm forgetting the most important part of this evening. You know how we had the hitching fiasco in Charleston? Well we hadn't unhitched since then - this was going to be the first time. Actually, unhitching is no problem, getting it back on is, but we scrunched up our courage and unhitched and went to dinner.

Cooper's was awesome! There's a mostly male waitstaff and they are all big characters but very polite and charismatic. I feel like the men in Austin are a kind of type - very polite, very gentlemanly, and kind of charming. Even though they are also sort of characters. We had a law student from Austin and I got to know him over three years and darn if he wasn't just like that. And on Monday when we were eating lunch in Austin a guy pulled his truck over suddenly right in front of us and jumped out. I thought he was crazy, but when I looked behind me I saw a woman had tripped on the curb and fallen and he had jumped out of his truck to help her!

It also seems that there is money in Austin. When we drove into town that first night to get bbq we pulled into a public parking lot, this is late Sunday night mind you, and the machine wanted $15.00 for parking. Period. Didn't matter if you were staying an hour or 12 hours. I was standing in front of the machine ruminating about how I wasn't about to spend $15.00 when two young couples separately went up to the machine and just handed over their $15.00. I asked them if didn't they think that was expensive for public parking on a Sunday night but they kind of just looked at me like, isn't she cute? The shopping center where we went to Trader Joe's was full even though it was a weekday mid day - and the shopping center had high-end stores like William Sonoma.

Our car needed its 6000 mile check-up so we got to drive around Austin and pretend we were Austinians doing normal every day tasks, go shopping at Trader Joe's, etc. While our car had its check up in North Austin we walked to a nearby non-touristy place for breakfast/lunch called Wild Chix & Waffles. It was in a big bland shopping center and we weren't holding out much hope for the food but we had to go there because it had an empty outside patio and we had J & S. Wrong on all counts! It had a wild interior that my artist friends would love - very original - and the food was so good! One of the pictures below is Harry eating his waffles and fried chicken. I ordered a salad (no really, I did!). Do you notice the border around Harry's plate? the owners had painted the same pattern on their floor - and there was great art on the walls - so interesting. Check out the menu on line and you get a sense of how original it was. So big surprise to open the door in a blah shopping center and walk into a fantasy.

We were thinking we would around Austin that afternoon after doing our errands but it was too hot - going up to 85 degrees! - so we decided to take the afternoon off (from what, you ask?) and just hang out around our trailer - which we did - I used the time to get caught up on this blog. And we made dinner "at home" since we had just stocked up at TJs.

We were uncertain what we were going to do on 12/4 and I'm really glad we were because Harry got up early to look at maps, etc., and realized that bad weather was coming in. The area we would be driving into was going to have below-freezing weather. That's another aspect of having the trailer that we have to be mindful about - we can't be in freezing weather because of the pipes, etc. We had to pack up and leaving kind of quickly because we had to drive west 8 hours to El Paso, the first place where the temps stayed above 32 at night. The good news is that we hitched up with relatively little trouble so we are hopeful we have turned a corner on that particular camper issue.

We were in the car for about 9 hours and spent the night in a La Quinta that would accept 2 large dogs because we didn't want to have to set up camp. Harry did an amazing job - he's an awesome camper driver. I tried to drive for awhile and I could not do it - I cannot drive the camper when there is wind - the wobbling freaks me out. Our tasks have evolved as follows: Harry drives and I conduct the business of traveling. I figure out where we are going, I find our campsites, book, talk to people, make schedules. When we get to our campsite, Harry sets up (hooks up water hose, electric hose, unhitches, levels the car) and I get the dogs settled which typically means I have to walk them to get the jitters out of their legs, and then I do stuff in the inside of the camper including feeding the dogs, to get us settled in. Fortunately, our evening chores have stayed the same - Harry cooks and I clean up. Yeah!!!

Wednesday morning, 12/6. El Paso. I took the dogs out at 6:30 am when it was still dark and discovered it had rained over night. No one was up and about yet as I walked the dogs around the La Quinta parking lot. We were right next door to a Krispy Kreme that had one lone car at the take out window, and one lone worker handing over a cup of coffee, with her cap blinking red and green with Christmas lights.Les mer