New Orleans to Austin
We got up at 5:30 in the morning to leave for a 9 hour drive to Austin Texas - the first hour was pretty dark but it wasn’t much better after dawn because it was gray, foggy, and it drizzled a bit.
We chose to leave in the morning so we could see the bayous of Louisiana on our way out. The highways between New Orleans until several miles outside Baton Rouge are elevated and take you over miles and miles of marshy swampland.
The skies and the landscape opened up when we hit Texas and it was considerably different from the borders of Louisiana. Texas varied from flat land to rolling hills and the occasional rock formation that the highway had been blasted through. It was nice but overall, pretty homogenized until we reached the Austin area where the mountains shot up making very abrupt peaks and deep valleys with amazing views. Actually, geographically, the Austin area looks a lot like southern California.
We showed up at Lacey’s apartment at about 5:30, dumped our stuff and left immediately for Rudy’s BBQ since all we had eaten on the road was Subway from Iowa, Louisiana. Rudys has great BBQ and we split pretty big portions of barbecued brisket, sausage, pork, baked beans, and by far, the best creamed corn I’ve ever had…. ever. That night we went out to downtown Austin to check out an event at the Beauty Bar that was part of the SXSW interactive after parties but it was WAY too packed so we went next door to a bar called Red7 and hung out there getting $3 cocktails and playing pool and skee ball until we took off for the night.
The next day we got up at our leisure. After breakfast and lounging around for a few hours, we took off exploring. First stop was the 360 bridge (which we had seen on our way out to pick up breakfast) where we parked on the side of the road, hiked up a pretty steep rockface and got to see an amazing view overlooking the bridge, the Colorado river, and in the distance the Austin city skyline. We hiked around the area, put our feet in the river for a bit, then took off for Barton Springs. Ryan had been there before and it was highly recommended by other people too. Barton Springs is a naturally occurring spring that feeds into a creek and it seems like everyone goes there to cool off—It’s awesome.
The rest of the afternoon we checked out South Congress St and Caesar Chavez Blvd, where we took photos of the bright colored buildings and hand painted signs. We also stopped by a restaurant to grab a taco to hold us ‘til dinner and it was DELICIOUS. After going back to Lacey’s to relax for a second we headed back to South Congress to get dinner at Guerros where we ate even more Mexican food. It was great but I personally liked the little side-of-the-road place better. Also around this time I was trying to get a picture of Lacey for the Asshole blog and I’m pretty sure I looked like a creep a few times before and after dinner. From there, we headed to a bar called Shangri-la on the other side of town to meet up with a friend of Ryan’s. The cocktails there were even cheaper than at Red7 and we spent a few hours playing pool and hanging out before we took off to hang at Lacey’s apartment.
When Caitlin and I first blogged about the trip, Lacey was the first person to reply with a place for us to stay and I’m glad it worked out. She was a great host and we had a lot of fun. She also indulged us with late nights even though she had to work the next day — she really took one for the team to make our time in Austin awesome.
— Dave
