More Austin

Close-up of the Texas Bluebonnet

No problem staying on the straight and narrow here!

Kinetic sculpture at the Wildflower Center

Saturday Farmer's Market in downtown Austin

Sunday morning I went to church....

Robin went elsewhere.

Food trucks at lunch time

Indian dosa

A good wurst

You know you're in Texas when....

Funky Austin

Stately Austin (state capitol building)

Lots of photos today because they do a better job than words describing Austin.  There are fun neigborhoods, good food, music, culture and great scenery.  There's a lively vibe.  It feels thriving especially compared to some of the struggling cities we see on our travels. 

And at the end of the day, we return to Chuck to be greeted by our guard-cat...

Beanie waiting for us

...and enjoy a home-cooked meal.

Baby Brussels Sprouts from the Farmer's Market braised with bacon and onion

Texas Hill Country

Livingston neighbors saying good-bye

We left our Livingston neighbors and headed west towards Austin and the hill country around it landing just southwest of Dripping Springs which is about 30 miles west of Austin.  We managed to hit Austin at rush hour and, from the freeway, it felt a lot like any other big city.  But once we cleared the suburbs we could appreciate the terrain and scenery.

WiFi HotSpot at our campground

Friday we drove around the countryside; out to Blanco, then Luckenbach (yes, there really is a Luckenbach Texas), through Fredericksburg and on to Enchanted Rock State Park; a 460' red granite outcropping at one time both feared and revered  by the Native Americans.  Being wussie, geezer girls, we admired the climbers from the ground.

Enchanted Rock in the distance

 Much of the area's first non-native settlers were German immigrants so the place names like Fredricksburg, Boerne and Gruene make me feel like we're back in Wisconsin, until we see some longhorn cattle grazing in a field.  Creek beds cross the countryside, mostly with low water levels or dry now due to the drought, but flood level markers are placed along the roadsides so you know that when it rains, the water really flows.  The land is hilly and the roads winding.  Scrubby cactus fields are side by side with fairly lush, woody areas.  It seems that the hills and waterways create varying micro-climates.  We are here in spring when things are probably at their greenest, but it's very attractive.  Also, it's Texas Bluebonnet peak blooming season and roadsides are covered with carpets of blue flowers.  The area has a lot of appeal.

Texas Bluebonnets along the road

Saturday we headed into downtown Austin for the Farmer's Market.  The greens are in along with carrots, beets, garlic scrapes and a few tomatoes.  Lots of free-range eggs, beef, lamb and pork.  We scored some "jowl bacon", the tiniest Brussels sprouts I've ever seen, some lettuce, eggs and lamb.  We should be set for the rest of the trip.  Then off to the highlight of Austin so far; The Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center.  Regardless of anyone's politics, you have to love this place.  It was created as a research facility in conjunction with the University of Texas.

 It's a beautiful set of gardens and walks clearly demonstrating good gardening practices for the variety of Texas ecosystems in an amazingly attractive setting.  It was a perfect day for a garden walk and we made the most of it.

Garden entry with rain conservation system

Resident Great Horned owl nesting at the garden entrance

Today we're off the the First Unitarian Church of Austin, a congregation of 500 which will be a big change from my usual church of 100 members.  Then more exploring the city.  We have a very slow Internet connection this morning so I won't post anymore pictures right now, but come back for more wildflower and Austin pictures.  Stay tuned.

Following a visit to Luckenbach, the navigator goes native.

The Last from Livingston

Yesterday morning we took one more hard look at the connectors on Chuck and Toad.   As we bent low to the ground, we attracted the attention of one of our neighbors.  (see photo below)   

 This little fellow was incredibly persistent approaching within a few inches and standing up to beg.  I finally decided he was attracted to Robin’s rust-colored plaid shirt and grey/brown pants.  Obviously she was a kindred spirit.  Hence the “Squirrel Whisperer” was born.

More neighbors at the campsite across the road.  Glad all the water isn't on our site.

Visits to 3 different RV service places finally yielded a new umbilical cord and the diagnosis that we also have a bad pin or two on the socket on the Toad.  We’ll do our best to get a good connection today and head for Dripping Springs and when we’re settled again we’ll take a better lock at the socket and see what we can do.

Meanwhile, dinner last night was mediocre Mexican food.  This place came recommended by locals but was pretty dumbed-down. 

We do much better in Kenosha.  We have high hopes for eating in Austin.  We'll keep you posted.

Staying Safe in Texas

So perhaps traveling to tornado alley in spring is a bad idea.  Along with the warm weather you get high winds, rain and impressive thunderstorms.  Luckily the softball-sized hail went south of us last night, but we had some severe weather.  Chuck rode through it fine but it made for a sleepless night.   We were due to leave Livingston today and head west of Austin to town of Dripping Springs (I can’t wait to see that), but the weather along the route looks threatening all day today so we’ve opted for another night here at Lake Livingston and we’ll head west tomorrow.  This morning as I drove to the park office to secure the extra night, ducks were swimming in new roadside puddles.  Yes, it really rained last night.

Meanwhile, we spent a good part of yesterday trying to resolve a problem with the connection between Chuck and Toad.  There’s a coiled electrical cord that plugs into the back of Chuck and the front of Toad and powers the brake and signal lights on Toad so that when we brake the rig or signal a turn, the car signals also light up.  In theory it will prevent someone from crashing into our back end.  This connection has been fussy as long as we’ve had the rig, requiring jiggling and twisting and jerking to get it right.  Oh yeah, and we’ve had to manipulate the cord too.  So yesterday we took the cord to an RV repair place here in Livingston who tested it and declared it bad.  They didn’t have a perfect replacement, but had a similar one they sold us for $160.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work a whole lot better, lighting up just one side of the car.  Being stubborn, geeky people, we took apart our old cord and examined it, even using Robin’s fancy multimeter to check the connections. 

Fixing(?) the cord

 Of course we had little idea what we were doing but eventually figured out how it all should work and confirmed that our cord worked, as least in testing.  There’s still a question of a possible short or loose connection when it’s stretched out between the vehicles or a bad socket on the rig or car.  Anyway,  another day in Livingston gives us time to get a better fix on the problem and hopefully find a solution.  RVing always gives one the opportunity to learn new things and spend money on new stuff.

You may be asking yourself why we came to in Livingston in the first place.  Livingston is the home of the Escapees RV club of which we are members.  They were the organizers of last fall’s bootcamp where we learned what we did and did not know about RVing.  Since we were heading for Texas, we decided we had to check out the home office.  Along with club headquarters, Escapees has an RV park here, a development of deeded lots where RV folks have built small homes with connected RV storage, and a Care Center where the medical needs of Escapees and be taken care of.  It’s an impressive operation. 

 Livingston is also home of Lake Livingston State Park where we are camped.  It's a beautiful, lush wooded park with great boating and fishing.

When it's not raining, our campsite at Lake Livingston

Downtown Livingston is centered around a courthouse square and we lunched yesterday at Whistlestop Café across from the courthouse.  The café is connected a gift/antique shop that Robin kept insisting was Downtown Pleasures. 

 I think she had a different sort of business in mind.

Over our table at the Whistlestop

Lunch:  chicken-fried steak, french dip, pinto beans and the best fries ever!

So today we’re relaxing, diagnosing and hopefully fixing our connection problem.  Next stop, Dripping Springs!

It Could Have Been Worse....

...But It Was A Tough Day

After 2 nights in Lake Bruin State Park, we loaded up, hooked up and headed for Texas.  It was raining lightly and thunderstorms were predicted but the driving wasn’t too bad.  We had about 260 miles to go to Livingston, TX which would be about 5 hours of driving.  As my friend Ellen taught me, “man plans, God laughs”.

Sign of things to come

As we crossed central Louisiana (CENLA to the cognoscenti), the sky darkened and the rain came in earnest.  In Pinegrove, the winds really picked up.  We were on a highway and crossed one very high bridge feeling the buffeting of the wind.  We could see an even higher, longer bridge ahead.  Trees were bending, stuff was flying through the air.  (Cue Wizard of Oz theme)  We had one last chance to exit the highway before the bridge and we took it.  We parked on a side road and could feel the rig rocking in the wind.  There was a stand of pine trees upwind from us and we worried that one of them would come over onto Chuck so we crawled half a block and pulled under a highway overpass, snuggling up behind a sheriff’s car.   

View out the windows while under the overpass

Apparently he didn’t like sharing because after a few minutes he waved us on.  The wind was still blowing and rain was coming down in sheets.  So much for southern hospitality.  We moved on a bit and sheltered ourselves alongside a warehouse somewhat out of the wind.  After about 30 minutes the sky lightened, the winds died down a bit, the rain let up and we worked our way through the side streets and back onto the highway.  As we crossed the bridge we had avoided earlier, we saw emergency vehicles working around semi-truck that had turned over on its side on the bridge.  We had made a very smart decision to get off when we did.

Storm damage

Disaster averted on we went.  Soon the Navigator Wars started.  We travel with a variety of navigational aids; a standard car GPS (Garmin Nuvii) dubbed Jill, a trucker’s GPS app on the iPad called John and a paper 2009 trucker’s atlas we inherited with the rig which is the Human Navigator’s backup source.  John and Jill disagreed on the next highway and turn.  It could be critical since as some point we’d have to cross a river and bridge height and weight limits make a difference to us.  The Human Navigator (HN) tended to side with Jill, and was trying to persuade John by changing his destination and routing.  Regardless of the changes, John was adamant.  The danger in giving names to inanimate objects is that take on a personality of their own.  We all remember Hal in 2001 A Space Odyssey, right?  So HN was ragging at John saying, “what’s the matter with you, I just don’t understand”, and “don’t be an idiot John”, etc.  I tend to side with John in these disputes because I figure he’s more current than the atlas and more truck-oriented than Jill, but I always defer to the HN decision because I’m driving and can’t see all the info.  So Jill, John and HN quibbled, snarled, sniped and argued for the next 30 miles until it was decision point.  Grudgingly, HN deferred to John and off we went.

15 miles of construction, a 15 minute delay at a train crossing and one construction detour and I had to concede that maybe it wasn’t John’s best day but finally we crossed into Texas.  And we’ll never know what perils we might have encountered on Jill’s route. 

Jill restored to the place of honor

 2 hours later we were at Lake Livingston State Park in Livingston, TX.  It was an 8 hour driving day; scary, exhausting and occasionally a bit tense, but we had survived to camp another day.  Our site is on the lake and very scenic.  The park is very empty this week and we’re here for 3 nights.  Plenty of time to recover.