Texas

Ah, Texas. We may have only been there four nights but heard more "y'all"s than you can poke a stick at! We loved it :-) and the people are some of the friendliest we have ever met. It's a massive state - they proudly were their own country for 9 years before joining the USA back in the 1830's and 1840's) - and like so many other places we've been to, you could spend a long time here. We spent our time down south, visiting Big Bend National Park, San Antonio and Austin before driving through Houston on our way to Louisiana. Unfortunately we didn't see many longhorn cattle, but we did see plenty of lone stars and steaks!




On the drive to Big Bend National Park.....nothing like a good straight road to tell you where you're going :-)



Big Bend National Park (down in the south-west of Texas, bordering Mexico)

Big Bend

Big Bend

Santa Elena Canyon, Big Bend. This is a cool area, the canyon wall on the left is Mexico and the wall on the right is Texas. The Rio Grande river that cuts through the canyon also separates the two countries. Fairly tough terrain though, we didn't see any dodgy border crossings taking place here :-) About 10 miles out of the park, though, we did have to stop at the US border patrol so they could make sure we hadn't stowed any Mexicans in the bullet. We were just so excited that someone asked us to show them what was under the frame, they were suitably impressed with our travel arrangement!!

Just had to include this to show you that we have come a long way from eating in the car to escape the pouring rain! On our way out of Big Bend.

This is at our campground in San Antonio at night.....charging the computer and this frog suddenly appeared on the screen!! Hilarious :-)

An iconic and proud building for every Texan - the Alamo (San Antonio). We spent a few hours here and really learnt a lot about the history behind the Alamo, including a bit about Davy Crockett (who allegedly died here with a hundred or so others when the Alamo was stormed by the Mexicans on March 6, 1836) and James Bowie, who the bowie knife is most likely named after. The Texans lost the battle at the Alamo on that day, but the battle cry of "Remember The Alamo" sustained them for a crushing victory over the Mexicans 6 weeks later that lead to Texas becoming its own country for the next 9 years. Okay, enough history now!

San Antonio River Walk

The highlight of Austin for tourists is probably the live music scene. However, we arrived on the Monday of a long weekend and all the music joints were recovering from a very busy weekend! The other fun thing about Austin though is heading down to the river to watch 750,000-1,000,000 bats fly out at dusk in an amazing formation to hunt for insects. In an hour, 1 bat will consume at least 600 mosquitos each! Hopefully you can see the bats that are not only close up, but also the black spots in the distance....there are also squillions of bats!