Day 11: Austin, TX to Lubbock, TX

Just a driving day today. We didn't do anything in Austin. I know we will get chastised for that, but there are some destinations that we just don't have time to explore. We also were staying a good 20 miles or so outside of the center, and were eager to get going on today's leg.

Thankfully we were staying on the road we would be taking so hopped on and off we went. The drive today was quite long but really enjoyable. Rte 183 is a nice road as it has a 70mph speed limit, even when just one lane each way, and occasionally slows down to 30 to go through towns. This is a nice change from the major highways that we have spent hours on at constant speed. Having these breaks keeps one interested and it's nice to see the small towns. I want to get a sound clip of a needle being scratched across a record to play as people do stop and stare when two bright Elises roll through.

From 2007 USA Elises

Rural Texas is definitely big American truck country. Even though Jared's Elise in this picture is a little ahead of the truck it still looks ludicrously proportioned:

From 2007 USA Elises

Further along the trip the terrain opened out a little and some of the hills had a nice reddish tone to them:

From 2007 USA Elises

There is also a huge wind farm up that way consisting of what seemed at least a hundred wind turbines:

From 2007 USA Elises

We ended up in Lubbock, which is in the middle of farming country. The locals we met were very friendly, but we knew we were not spoiled for choice culturally when the response to "Are there any nice restaurants around?" was answered with "There is a Red Lobster up the road". I have to say that in over 3500 miles and over a dozen states, everyone we have met has been incredibly friendly, which is a major factor in enjoying the country the way we are.

We have two days to get to Vegas, and quite a long way to drive. Tomorrow's destination is Santa Fe, but we may head to Albuquerque as originally planned as this will make the next day shorter by an hour. Indeed we may go past there even and try and get as far as possible, as we have to get to Vegas by early evening on the 18th.

Day 10: San Antonio, TX to Austin, TX

Today we decided to head back down to San Antonio before the much awaited drive up through the Texas hills. On the way I finally got a new Compact Flash reader at Best Buy. Just for good measure we tested the CF card from the ChaseCam in a machine at the store. Thankfully it was ok, and it was an opportunity to use Windows Vista for the first time. It seemed quite nice but it crashed within 5 minutes. We popped the card eventually and left with a load of fatal error message boxes on the screen. All we tried to do was look at a clip off the card. Unimpressive.

Finally we saw a ludicrously large item by the side of the road. Not quite "World's Largest Something-or-other", but it's a start:

From 2007 USA Elises

We visited the Riverwalk area of San Antonio. It's astonishingly pretty and incredibly relaxing. One forgets that one is in the middle of Texas when walking by the side of the water there. It had an almost European feel to it.

From 2007 USA Elises

From 2007 USA Elises

As usual there are more pictures than I link here in the gallery. The "2007 USA Elises" links under each picture will also link to the gallery.

Adjacent to the Riverwalk is a little gallery of shops. I picked up this Peruvian woolen rug thing that will look great at home on the wall. The shop staff were very proud that their merchandise was all authentic from Central and South American craftsmen. This was good of course, but the items are not cheap and I expect $200 is quite a lot for some of the places where these (very skilled) people are living, so I quipped that of course 90% of the price will go to the original artist. They insisted that they maintain a close relationship with them and they do indeed receive a healthy cut.

From 2007 USA Elises

Leaving San Antonio we headed north west into the nice hill country. Weather was perfect; warm and sunny with a breeze, but not too hot. This was the first moment in the whole trip that I felt like we were closing in on the west coast. The hills reminded me a lot of some areas in California.

From 2007 USA Elises

At Fredericksburg we spotted another Elise on the road, but otherwise it was a town that didn't seem to have much worth stopping for. We had been advised to stop there but kept going as the only building of note was "Whittington's Jerky Store (Since 1963)". A bit further up the road a small sign indicated that we had entered a little town called "Hye". I was hoping that on the other side was another sign saying "Bye", but sadly there was none. Further along we came across this metal cow thing. Very cool looking, and it was solar powered too. One day I will find out what it does at night. Hopefully it has laser eyes and breathes fire to some techno moosic.

From 2007 USA Elises

We were told to visit a twisty road called 'The Devil's Backbone', but he must be a spineless fellow to be honest given the road. Not really what we were expecting, although we suspect that perhaps we missed the main bit. Anyway, at that point we had driven enough off our main path and just gave up and rejoined the road to Austin.

After some frustrating hotel hunting we eventually found accommodation and went out for some (surprise) steak dinner with my friend Mike and his family.

From 2007 USA Elises