We woke up early on Monday morning and after a quick breakfast, we checked out and hit the road for Austin, Texas. We drove out of Louisiana through bayou country – lots of flat low-lying wetlands and marshes full of trees growing out of the water. At Baton Rouge we drove over the Mississippi River on an enormous bridge.
We stopped in Texas for lunch at Al T's Seafood & Steakhouse. They were still serving Louisiana specialties such as gumbo and jambalaya, but we saw some Texan-sized steaks on their menu and big bags of "crackling" for sale. The friendly waitress gave us a piece each to try, but in addition to the pork rind there was a big crispy layer of fat underneath – probably our fat allocation for the next two days. We settled for a burger and a large chicken salad. We hit the road again across the flat brown Texan plains. There were lots of billboards along the freeway advertising casinos, personal injury lawyers and fundamentalist Christian propaganda.
We arrived in Austin just after dark only to find that there was a convention on, however we still managed to find reasonable accommodation on the edge of downtown. We had a rest in our room and then went out to find some dinner. It was a ten minute walk into town and we walked along Sixth Street which was lined with bars playing live music and tattoo parlours. We walked around a couple of blocks and then headed back to a Tex-Mex restaurant on Sixth Street for dinner.
We were woken up in the middle of the night by some people in the room next to us. One lady was describing very loudly how she got her tattoos in jail! When Keith opened the door to our room, they were really apologetic and quietened down immediately.
After breakfast on Tuesday in the overcrowded dining room, we walked to the stunning pink granite Italian Renaissance Texas State Capitol. Like everything in Texas, it was bigger - fifteen feet taller than the US Capitol in Washington, DC. We entered the building through the South Foyer where we were greeted by life size marble statues of Stephen F Austin and Sam Houston. A guide conducted us on a short tour of the building and then we were free to wander around ourselves. Inside the foyer there was a beautiful terrazzo floor commemorating battles fought on Texas soil, a rotunda and a dome. On the rotunda floor was the Great Seal surrounded by the six seals of the countries (France, Spain, Mexico, Texas, Confederate United States and United States) whose flags have flown over Texas. Portraits of the Presidents and Governors of Texas circled the four levels of the rotunda, and two hundred and eighteen feet above us in the dome was a star measuring eight feet from point to point. We visited the Senate Chamber, the House of Representatives Chamber, the Supreme Court courtroom and the Court of Appeals courtroom, which contained beautiful antique oak and walnut furniture, drapes, and paintings. We left the Capitol building and spent a little time wandering around the Grounds admiring the flower gardens, fountains and monuments.
Then we made our way to the Visitor's Centre on Sixth Street where we got some information and a brochure containing a self guided walking tour. The walking tour started at the Texas State Capitol and finished on Sixth Street so we decided to do it backwards. We had just started the walking tour when it began to rain, we tried to keep going but the rain just got heavier so we decided to stop for lunch. It was still raining when we finished lunch so we walked back to the hotel to collect the car.
We drove to South Congress Avenue which was full of really interesting and unusual shops. We went to Uncommon Objects which had a great collection vintage clothing, accessories, home wares and antiques. We visited Allen's Boots which sold very expensive Western clothing, Stetsons and beautiful leather cowboy boots. There were also a few lots along the Avenue where fast food vendors were plying their wares out of shiny silver retro caravans (Air Streams).
We decided to have dinner at the highly recommended Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood. It was a twenty mile drive away and appeared to be in the middle of nowhere – but it was worth it. There was a big brick smouldering BBQ pit with big slabs of brisket, turkey, ribs and chickens cooking on racks over the coals and Germanic looking sausages hanging from hooks above. We tried brisket, pork ribs, turkey and sausage with potato and slaw. For dessert we shared a warm blackberry cobbler with ice-cream. It was all really delicious!
On Wednesday we walked into town to complete the rest of the walking tour we had attempted yesterday. Today there was clear blue sky and we started near the Capitol and worked our way south on Congress Avenue past the Governor's Mansion which had been burnt down by arson and was under reconstruction, and the old Capitol building ruins, also burnt to the ground. There was the beautiful Old Bakery building from 1876 which was now a tourist visitor centre. We saw St Mary's Cathedral built in 1874 and Millett's Opera House from 1878.
We wandered around checking out the old architecture including copper bay windows and cast iron store fronts. We stopped at the immaculately restored Driskill Hotel for a grapefruit juice and walked around the lobby and bar areas marvelling at the antique furnishings, stained glass fittings, paintings, trophy heads and sculptures. We continued on to the Second Avenue shopping district past old hardware shops, livery stables, grocery stores etc.
After lunch we set off to check out the northern area of Austin. We walked up Guadalupe Street past the University of Texas with an impressive clock tower, cheap restaurants and good street art. We stopped at Supercuts for Suzie to have a haircut and the lead story in the local paper was the closure of Macy's at a local shopping mall after 31 years. We checked out Trudy's Tex Mex as a dinner possibility on the way to walk through Texas University. The university was enormous with roads running through it and it took us a while to reach the travertine Lyndon Johnson Library and Museum. We saw a recreation of the Oval Office with memorabilia from the LBJ days – the tumultuous 1960's with the Cold War and the Vietnam War. There was a display of the gifts from numerous heads of state visiting the White House at the time. We sat and listened to a great humour exhibit (with a life-size animatronic LBJ doll) give excerpts from famous LBJ speeches including the hard of hearing drunk (I liked what I was drinking, better than what I was hearing), and Winston Churchill receiving the temperance union lady (We have achieved so little and there is so much more to do). We were kicked out at 5.00 pm and on the way back to the hotel we found a mobile phone on the road. The grateful owner gave us a giant chocolate éclair – as if we needed that!
We went to dinner at Trudy's where we shared their infamous stuffed avocado, a salad and flan for dessert. The stuffed avocado was battered, fried and stuffed with spicy chicken and cheese. One of the waiters warned us that "People do not come here for health reasons".
We had an easy day on Thursday as we were driving to Dallas to visit Keith's cousin Sonja and her family and we wanted to arrive after they had got back from school and work.
We checked out of our hotel late morning and drove out of Austin stopping on the way at a shopping centre for lunch. It was only a short drive to Dallas and we drove along the Interstate Highway 35 most of the way. Sonja and Mike live about twenty miles north of Dallas so we had wonderful views of the skyscrapers with the blue sky in the background as we drove past the city on the way to their house through a spaghetti of highways.
It was really great to see Sonja again as we last saw her with baby Jack (now almost fifteen) in 1997. We were meeting Mike and their other two kids Luke and Annie, and the squirrel hunter dog, Max, for the first time today. After we unloaded our bags, we had to head out almost immediately to take Luke to basketball practice, and then we drove on into town for dinner at Patrizio (Mike and Sonja's favourite restaurant). After dinner we headed back to Mike and Sonja's place where we spent a couple of hours chatting before turning in for bed.
On Friday, after Sonja got back from dropping her kids off at school, we drove into town to check out the JFK memorial.
We parked downtown and walked to the Sixth Floor Museum. The museum was housed in the old Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal bullets from the sixth floor. It was an exhibit detailing the events leading up to, during and after the assassination. There were displays of memorabilia, detailed eyewitness accounts, original photographs taken by onlookers, documentary film and video footage.
Then we walked to the nearby Victory Tavern for lunch. We spent such a long time chatting over lunch, that we had to rush to go and pick up Annie and Luke from school. After we got back to Mike and Sonja's house, we left the others and walked around the lake to the supermarket where we bought fruit, chocolate and wine. It was just getting dark when we walked back to the house, and on the way we saw lots of coots and ducks in the beautiful sunset over the lake.
Back at the house, we helped put together a salad while Mike grilled some steaks on the barbecue outside. We had a lovely dinner with lots of laughter and we spent a pleasant evening catching up.
On Saturday morning, after various children had been collected (Annie from a sleepover and Luke from hockey practice), we had a lovely big breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs and tortillas together. We spent a leisurely morning and then headed out to watch Jack's ice hockey match. The game was on an oval ice rink with two teams of six players wearing a lot of protective gear. It was very fast-paced and physical with the players constantly slamming into the barriers and each other and sliding across the ice. The game was very exciting and Jack scored three of the goals in a 6-3 win.
After the game we all drove to Fort Worth (Cow Town) and it was very touristy, but had excellent stockyards with Texas Longhorns and horses to ride, a stockyard maze, Cowboy hall of fame, mechanical bulls, Indians and cowboys galore, and associated paraphernalia. After the kids had made it through the maze and Annie had ridden a horse, we left for Joe T. Garcia's Tex Mex restaurant around the corner where we had the best Mexican food we had ever eaten. We started with corn chips and salsa, followed by nachos topped with tomatillo salsa and cheese, enchiladas in rich tomato sauce, corn tortillas, flour tortillas, beef, chicken, onions, capsicum, guacamole, rice and refried beans with a smoky pork flavour. We shared some sopapillas for dessert. These were deep fried tortillas with honey and cinnamon. We drove home with a detour round a massive traffic jam and relaxed in front the gas fire in the living room.
After breakfast on Sunday, we said goodbye to everyone and then headed off. It was raining very heavily so we made slow progress. As the morning progressed the temperature began to drop and we found ourselves driving through sleet which turned into snow. The roads were icy and the countryside was white. Just before lunch we came out of the other side of the cold front.
The sun was shining when we arrived in Amarillo but it was still bitterly cold. We drove through Amarillo and then decided to drive back to the highway to check out the Big Texan Inn opposite the Big Texan Steak Ranch - an "Our Pick" restaurant in the Lonely Planet. We had seen signs for the Big Texan Steak Ranch's 72 oz steak challenge (the steak is free if you can eat it together with all the accompaniments in less than an hour) all along the highway. The facade of the motel resembled a street in an old West town and the room was really nice with chunky wooden furniture, fringed bed linens and curtains, all decorated with the Texan five-pointed star.
At 7.30 pm we walked across the car park to the Big Texan Steak Ranch. The inside of the restaurant looked like a big barn. There were light fittings fashioned from cartwheels and antlers and animal heads mounted on the walls. Neither of us felt up to the steak challenge – opting instead to share a 21 oz steak with sides of coleslaw, okra, cowboy beans and green beans and we tried a couple of delicious tender smoked beef ribs. While we were in the restaurant, a man attempted the steak challenge with much fanfare and applause. He gave up after about forty minutes having barely made a dent in the steak. Sitting at the table next to us were three old timers from Illinois who were heading to New Mexico to do some quail hunting. We all left the restaurant at the same time and they showed us their six hunting dogs (setters) in their custom built truck. Each dog had its own compartment filled with hay.
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