Po' Boys, Cowboys, and Keeping Ausin Weird.

Hello friends!  A long-winded update awaits.

On Friday 25th Eric and I left Nashville and to go to New Orleans for the weekend.  We passed through Alabama and Mississippi on our way. 

All of the visitor centers in the southern states seem cooler than up north.  (STILL LOVE YOU MN).  This rocket was at the Alabama Welcome Center.

Also, Alabama will cut a bitch.

Huzzah New Orleans!

We stayed at a surprisingly nice hotel (the Hyatt Regency) with our friends John Schmitt and Dusty Jensen, in downtown New Orleans, with the massive Superdome outside our window.  It was around a 15 minute walk into the heart of the French Quarter.

Eric, Dusty and John were all converged in New Orleans to attend the bachelor party weekend of our friend Ben Tannehill, so that meant I was pretty much alone most of the weekend.  I spent some time shopping on Magazine Street, hanging out in the French Quarter, running along the Riverwalk, and, of course, eating beignets at Cafe du Monde.   The young lads stayed out late, proving to be hilarious entertainment when they came home in the wee hours of the morning.

On Monday we packed our things and headed off to Austin, Texas, to stay with Terry and Cathy Sonnenstine.  The Sonnenstines have known Eric's family for many years when they used to live in Minnesota.   They were wonderfully gracious to let us stay with them!

Turns out the Texas Welcome Center was also pretty awesome, with a neat swamp walkout area.

Not sure what drive friendly means, and why it is exclusive to Texas.

Eric was ready to conquer the Lone Star state!

The Sonnenstines live in a lovely home outside of Austin in a town called Lakeway, with a beautiful backyard pool.

Since the days have grown much warmer, a lot of time was spent out in the backyard doing things like this:

 

 And this:

Terrible, no?

We spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday working and lounging poolside.  On Wednesday night Terry made us tofu gumbo!

It was just delicious.

Austin has a lot of amazing food, so Eric and I also spent a fair amount of time at various Austin eateries, reveling in super delicious vegan fare. 

Friday evening we went into town for dinner at a restaurant called Casa de Luz.  They only make one meal, so you pay for your food, serve yourself soup and salad and wait to be served your entree.  It was absolutely delicious.  After that we walked along Lady Bird Lake Trail.

Look close and you'll see a tiny adorable dog perched on the front of that guy's kayak.

Following our walk, we went to a toy store called Toy Joy that had all manner of strange and interesting toys.  They also had vegan soft serve, which was rad.

On Saturday we attempted to go to Hamilton Pool, a natural cave that has a pool and a fifty foot waterfall.  Unfortunately for us, the wait time was an hour and a half, so we nixed that one. Fortunately for us, there was a small winery about two miles away that had wine tastings!  Wine fixes everything.  Westcave Cellars Winery was beautiful and the people were very friendly.

Near the winery ran Hamilton Creek, where we stopped to cool our feet for a little bit.

Things almost got a little dicey, but I am a rock climbing superhero, so everything turned out OK.

We went into downtown Austin for lunch at a food truck called Conscious Cafe (vegan wraps!) and then headed off the the "Cathedral of Junk".  It is Austin's official weird tourist attraction, a massive two story structure of scraps and trash, started in 1989 and completely built by one man.

 

It was seriously cool and the guy who made it, Vince Hannemann, was incredibly nice.


Due to some scheduling shenanigans, we have a bit more time in Texas than expected, so we decided to explore.  We wanted to go to the Gulf Coast and the Sonnenstines suggested a city called Port Aransas, so we left Austin on Sunday.  Port Aransas is about 4 1/2 hours southeast of Austin, near Corpus Christi.  The city seems too good to be true, as it has 6 miles of sandy beach that you can camp on!  For three nights! For only a $12 parking permit! If you've never woken up to an ocean sunrise, put that shit your bucket list.

More on Port Aransas in the next post!  See y'all soon.