Friends and Family

After getting to the big town of Snyder Texas at midnight, we got a bit of a late start.  We opted for the "free" hotel breakfast and spent most of the morning visiting with my aunt.  We went to the local park and took the dogs for a nice walk, and I think they appreciated getting out and stretching their legs more than just the rest stop breaks we had the previous day.

The trip Sunday was much shorter, only about 6 hours, to Austin, Texas.  A good friend and former coworker lives there and I wanted to say hi.  My wife also has a fascination with state capitols so I thought she would like to check it out.

The drive was nice.  For a state that has historically been big into oil for as long as I can remember (my dad used to tell stories about working for oil companies), they sure seem to have embraced alternative energy...at least wind generation.

Field of...windmills

I guess central Texas has been getting some much needed rain, and it was actually green and quite pretty.  Very different from the trips I remember as a child...or the one through the panhandle yesterday.

Roadside wildflowers south of Abilene...I think it was.

We got to Austin and checked into the hotel around 6pm...after making a bit of a detour.  The highway system around the hotel is undergoing some construction and is quite confusing.  The turn by turn guidance program we are using (Navmii...which allows you to download maps for offline use so you aren't using so much cellular data...more on this in upcoming posts) didn't have the correct exit number and we ended up getting a scenic tour of the hotel area.

Traveling with the dogs has made finding hotels a bit more tricky.  I had heard that more and more are allowing people to bring their pets, but it isn't universal yet.  So, finding reasonably priced and clean hotels that have free internet and accept dogs has been a bit tricky but we are doing OK so far.  Some hotels, such as the Baymont in Snyder charge an extra $20 per dog while the LaQuinta we are in today lets them stay for free.

Traveling can be tiring

It was nice to see my friend John again and finally meet his family.  They treated us to some Texas BBQ (having family from the area, I love good Texas BBQ) and good conversation.  I know we were a bit tired from all the travel, but hope we were good enough company. Thanks for your hospitality John and Michelle, we will definitely need to return the favor on our boat sometime.

On tap for today we will go visit the capitol, make our way east...somewhere, and meet with our real estate agents who reportedly have some good news for us.