Blogs from Hill Country, Austin, Texas, United States, North America

I apologise in advance given I am writing this blog after a very strong Margarita... typos galore I'm sure.. Anyway... Day 22: last day in paradise (ie New Orleans) Checked in at another hotel - the Holiday Inn - courtesy of hotwire.com and after another casual walk around the French Quarter it was back to being pool side again. I don't think we really needed 4 days in New Orleans but it was nice to soak up all the culture - my favourite place so far. Upon recommendation from Jon's dad we had dinner at the famous Pat O'Briens bar, where the original Hurricane mix was invented, for my last taste of gumbo. Yummy. Day 23: greyhound to Houston Texas! Another long day on the greyhound - about 8 hours again I think. Approaching Houston was ... read more

Before the Show When we woke up on Misty Matthews' various couches, we looked around at the disaster scene surrounding us. It was pretty bad when we had arrived the night before, but the extra beer bottles and cans, plus the natural detritus left behind by a group of wandering 20-somethings. We all took this wonderful opportunity to get clean again. Miraculously, Steve also decided that this would be a prime time for his first shower in at least 3 days (and we're talking 3 days of car travel and hard rocking ). He came out in his boxers, air drying himself since apparently Misty didn't have the foresight to prepare guest towels for her random weekend encounters with strange bands. We said thanks to our gracious hosts, and made moves to the van. We... read more

December 07, Tuesday Got into the 20's last night. Up at 0730 and it is 30 outside now. Nice and cozy in my RV. Very quiet in the park. I wish this park was closer to San Antonio. I'd just stay here. But I've already seen everything there is to see in Austin so time to move on. Sometime later this week or early next week I'll drive down to Kerrville and check out the RV parks there. I've already done lots of homework on them on the internet and some of them look like a good place to use as a home base. Most of the parks are right on the Guadalupe River which is nice. And Kerrville is only40 miles from San Antonio. Planning on driving to Temple this morning and going by the ... read more

Austin April 12-15: Chapter 1: A Bump in the Road This one started out kinda bad. We were just pulling into Austin (Austin City Limits?) when I noticed that all of my dashboard lights were on. Now, we had been noticing that a squeak in the belts was getting worse. It started out when we would turn the airconditioner on so I fugured it was the AC belt and we could check into getting it fixed in San Antonio. Unfortunately, we started noticing that it was becoming more constant and squeaked while driving without the AC and then....the squeak stopped. For those of you even remotely familiar with cars, you know this means the belt broke. It was shortly thereafter that all the dash lights came on and I was teleported back to highschool; to a ... read more

Today Stanley went to Bull Creek, the 360 Bridge, and the outlook on 360 to take a picture in front of the Austin skyline. We are working on taking pictures at all the great places in Austin to send to our buddy 3rd grade class in New Mexico.... read more

This is my first blog entry! Right now I am trying to finish preparing everything for my flight to Paris tomorrow. It seems like there is so much work to do just to get there; from applying to study abroad, to buying health insurance, applying for scholarships, booking the flight, getting my French visa, packing, and planning, planning, planning!!! It's enough to give someone a headache. But here I am, at the culmination of so much work. I can't believe it's finally here. As I look forward to my journey, I know that I cannot prepare for everything, in fact, as we may see, there will be lots of unexpected obstacles and challenges that appear. However, I am confident that I will be able to face these challenges head on. So I guess that means I'm ... read more