Our second full day in Austin started out with clear skies and much warmer weather. Thanks to the snow from yesterday, I found out that one of our old college friends Missy now live in Austin from her status update on Facebook. To both of our delight, we arranged to meet for a nice lunch at the Hula Hut right on Lake Austin with her 8 month old boy Liam and her husband Conor.
Oh Austin! We have heard so many wonderful things about you. Ava even got a new scooter to ride all over your sidewalks. We can’t wait to see all of what you have to offer. We can’t wait to see why you call yourself weird. Let’s open the Airstream door and say hello to Austin!
When we woke up today, we had an agenda. We were determined to get on the first tour into the caves so we can hit the road early to get to Austin. That means we had to get our tour tickets as the doors open at 9 am.
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After a beautiful day spent swimming, picnicking and BBQing yesterday at Balmorhea State Park in Texas, this morning we are faced with another transit day. Today is our first full day of driving across Texas and we know we have a daunting task in front of us.
We arrived at our first Texas destination, Balmorhea State Park, in the dark. So we really didn’t have any idea how this place looked in the daytime. This campground is actually set-up pretty cool. Every site is surrounded by a picnic area (many are covered by these white adobe shelters) and a tiny island that houses the electric and water hook-ups… and you get to pull through to your own section of the paved road.
We packed up the Airstream as fast as we could this morning and said good-bye to the Las Cruces KOA. And for some reason, “as fast as we could” is 1o am. And that’s without making breakfast! But I should give us a break. We are not on vacation. We are working from the road… and have to balance work and kids and sight-seeing and driving… oh, and our cat too. So, if you take that into account, 10 am ain’t too shabby.
We have now finally left our comfort zone. Treading on new grounds with every rotation of the tires as we head east with Mali Mish in tow is more thrilling than we have imagined. And it is only getting better by the minute.
Today is the day. Today is a traveling day and today we are taking Mali Mish further east than we’ve ever been before. We had stayed in The Shady Dell for 5 nights and this morning we packed up the Airstream and headed back out on the road. After all, we are on this trip to go new places and see new things.
Of course we had to take a souvenir of Shady Dell with us. T-Shirts and post cards will do.
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We decided last night that today was going to be our last full day in Bisbee. We wanted to get out and start seeing some sights. As good as relaxing at The Shady Dell sounds to us, if we didn’t get our act together on this road trip, we could veg out here forever. So the plan is to soak up all that we can today in Bisbee and head out into New Mexico tomorrow.
I think Yoda overheard our conversation and decided if she is going to stalk Bisbee birds, this is going to be her last chance.
Today is the third Monday of February which means it is President’s Day. We’ve been in Bisbee for 3 days now since last Friday and it is as crowded as we have ever seen. The last 2 trips here we only stayed a couple of nights each and I believe both trips landed in the middle of the week. This part of Arizona is sort of off the beaten path and unless you come to Arizona a lot, you would probably stick closer to the bigger towns.
If you read yesterday’s post, you would have learned that we finally connected with Claire and Daniel who are wrapping up their year long trip in their vintage Airstream Caravel. Their daughters Sophia and Lulu are close to our girls’ age and Ava is very excited to have a playmate for the next few days. Sophia came by in the morning to say hi to Ava and we invited her in for some Clifford the Big Red Dog on PBS kids.
After almost a week of dilly-dallying, we finally got our act together to see some sights. If you have ever gone on a road trip of this magnitude, you would know how much work it is to just finally get out of the house. Towards the end of our preparation, we left a lot of the final tasks to be done while we are already on the road. That is pretty much what we have been doing for the last few days, and there is much more to do.
Tucson, Arizona is one of our favorite places to be during this time of year. Even though we have been here 3 other times before, we decided we wanted to come back again on our way out. It’s familiar, it’s non-intimidating, and it’s really easing our way into the journey one step at a time.
On our way to Tucson, we stopped at Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch. We stopped here last year for the first time when we visited here and we remember Ava having a good time so we wanted to stop again. We try to instill our love of animals onto our girls and places like these are great places for them to interact and learn about these beautiful creatures first hand.
Here are some photos we took during our visit. The cost is $5 for adults and kids under 7 are free. The $5 entry fee gets you a bucket of feed and a little cup of nectar for the birds.
Guess who is in charge of babysitting today.