Texas 11/29/2016 - 12/04/2016
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Texas 11/29/2016 - 12/04/2016
My Itinerary:
Austin
Delta Flight 5747 Leave LAX 5:55pm Terminal 5 Gate 50B
Arrive in Austin 10:55pm Gate 4
Wednesday Nov. 30th.
Eat Franklin BBQ.
Go canoing.
Longhorn Caves
South Congress Bridge Bats
Thursday December 1st.
Hiking
Graffiti wall
East 6th st.
Country Dancing
Dinner Movie
Friday Dec. 2nd
http://www.wimberleyzipline.com/zipline_info/index.html
Jacobs well
Rahuls place
Escape room
Saturday Dec. 3rd
Alamo Hours 9:00 am till 4:00 pm
River Walk
Magic Mountain hours, 2:00pm till 10:00pm
Eat Texas BBQ.
Go back to Auras
Sunday Dec. 4th
Leave Austin 12:36pm Delta
Arrive LA 2:05 pm Delta
My Check-ins:
Tomb Rider 3d.
December 3 at 6:42pm · San Antonio, TX ·
Score 12387
checked in to Guinness World Records Museum.
December 3 at 6:41pm · San Antonio, TX ·
checked in to Lolli and Pops At La Cantera with Aura Castro and 2 others.
December 3 at 5:07pm · San Antonio, TX ·
eating pizza at Marco's Pizza (Helotes, TX) with Aura Castro and 2 others.
December 3 at 11:33am · Helotes, TX ·
checked in to The San Antonio River Walk with Aura Castro and 2 others.
December 3 at 10:22am · San Antonio, TX ·
Leon Mass checked in to The Alamo with Aura Castro and 2 others.
December 3 at 9:49am · San Antonio, TX ·
checked in to Extreme Escape with Aura Castro and 2 others.
December 2 at 7:09pm · San Antonio, TX ·
eating Whataburger at Whataburger with Aura Castro and 2 others.
December 2 at 5:20pm · San Antonio, TX ·
In n out better but still good
Natural Bridge Caverns with Leon Mass.
December 2 at 3:02pm · San Antonio, TX ·
Largest cavern in Texas!
eating peach cobbler at Rudy's "Country Store" and Bar-B-Q (24152 W Ih 10, San Antonio) with Aura Castro.
December 2 at 12:29pm · San Antonio, TX ·
What's the diff between cobbler and pie?
checked in to Jacob's Well with Aura Castro.
December 2 at 10:04am ·
Welly well well
dancing with Aura Castro at Broken Spoke Dancehall.
December 1 at 7:35pm · Austin, TX ·
Country dancin'
Lady Bird Lake with Aura Castro.
December 1 at 3:04pm · Austin, TX ·
Serene.
Longhorn Cavern State Park with Aura Castro.
December 1 at 1:11pm · Burnet, TX ·
Pretttyyyy
eating hot chocolate at Mozart's Coffee Roasters with Aura Castro.
November 30 at 6:59pm · Austin, TX ·
Light show
checked in to Alamo Drafthouse Slaughter Lane with Aura Castro.
November 30 at 4:30pm · Austin, TX ·
Watching Moana
checked in to Austin Grafitti Park with Aura Castro.
November 30 at 2:27pm · Austin, TX ·
checked in to Texas Rowing Center.
November 30 at 11:43am · Austin, TX ·
Paddle down the Colorado River.
added 2 new photos — eating Texas BBQ at Franklin Barbecue with Aura Castro.
November 30 at 9:57am · Austin, TX ·
Starting out with the best ribs i have ever tasted. Well worth the 2 hour wait... ya'll!
11/29/2016 Tuesday
The Flight To Austin
I decided to go to Texas to visit some of my friends. I got ready and packed as usual. Everything is pretty much automatic for me now. My roomate/friend takes me to the flyaway and I take that shuttle to LAX. I of course did forget my ticket but found out that with Delta you can use your cell phone and they just scan that instead of the ticket itself. Felt kind of weird but futuristic. Thankfully my phone was fully charged. If it wasn't I'm sure they can print one out for you anyway. I come to stand in line to check-in my bag. I have one big suit case and a backpack. I also forgot to check if there was 1 free bag check-in or not. In this case it wasn't so I had to pay $25 for it to go there and $25 to come back. Oh well, the airport just keeps teaching me lessons. I paid the $25 and got to the gate. I had about 1.5 hours left so I grabbed some snacks and went onto the LAX wi-fi which was nice. 15 minutes before lift-off my plane isn't there still. The attendant assured us that the plane will come and we will still make it on time. The plane did finally come and we went in. The captain told us that we actually wouldn't make it on time because we are still waiting for some people and we will be about 10 minutes late. I wish I would have known this earlier so I can text my pick-up so she wouldn't have been waiting for me. Oh well, 10 minutes is nothing to be afraid of. We lift off. Of course this plane doesn't have any entertainment available but it does have wif-fi which you have to pay for. Yet again, this isn't said on the website. Oh well, I had entertainment on my laptop and watched a movie. To my surprise, however, they did serve cookies and drinks which was nice. About 2 hours later we land in Austin and as soon as we land, my pick-up, Aura, calls me. I answer the phone and she is asking if I'm almost out of the airport because she is waiting for me outside so she doesn't have to pay to park and doesn't get moved if she is waiting for me for too long. I told her that there was of course a delay and I need to pick up my luggage. I go to the luggage pick-up area and see that there is luggage coming in from L.A. Ok, this is a small airport, I'll just get it quick and be right out. I don't see my luggage. Waiting for a second drop, nothing else is dropping. There was a couple standing also waiting for their luggage and I ask them if they are coming in from L.A. and still waiting for their luggage? They respond to me saying no, they have arrived early from Utah and are just hanging out until their luggage comes. I went up to an attendant and she told me that the luggage dispenser I am looking for is all the way down to the end of the luggage area. I think to myself, great, maybe this airport is a lot bigger than I thought and I am going to waste a lot of time looking for this. I start walking, after maybe 30 steps I get to the end of the airport and there was my luggage. I laughed to myself, why did she say "all the way to the end?" I call Aura and tell her I am coming out. She comes to pick me up and she drives me to her place where I will be staying for the next few days.
The first thing I notice is the gas prices. $1.89 compared to like $3.09 in Los Angeles. I thought that this gas station was closed so they just didn't update the prices, but no this is how much it was. Supply and demand I suppose. We get to Auras place and start catching up. Her boyfriend Britt joins us and we further on the conversation. We go over the itinerary and Aura states that we need to wake up pretty early to go to Franklyns BBQ because it is pretty famous and they serve the meat in the morning and stop until they run out.
11/30/2016 Wednesday
Austin, Texas
Aura and I wake up and head to Franklyns. As she told me, there was already a line and the place wasn't even open yet. It was 7:30am and the place opens at 9:00am. She tells me, if this was a weekend, we needed to be here even earlier. This place better be good for us to wait 1.5 hours just to sit down. Some of the workers were already there setting up, they come up to people in the line and kindly tell us that there are chairs stowed and we can grab them if we would like to sit. So we did. We relax, I tell Aura about our mutual friends in and out of Los Angeles and what they are up to.
There is another person straight ahead of us who is visiting from San Francisco who also joined in on our conversation. One of the employees came up to us to see what we were having so the line can go pretty quick and to make sure they have enough. The time actually went by pretty quickly and before we knew it, it was 9 and the line started to move. We get up to the counter with our new friend from San Francisco. At the counter, they put out free samples. First we tasted samples of the turkey they serve. This was already the best turkey I have ever had, I was very impressed. I couldn't believe how succulent the turkey is. This place was known for their briskets and we also had a sample of that. The briskets were good, but not the best I've tasted. I ended up ordering the ribs with a potato salad and Aura ordered the brisket. We sat down, waited a bit and the food came out.
Oh man, the place definitely lives up to the hype. Best BBQ ribs I've had. Great potato salad too! The last time I remember having ribs this good is in Missouri, and yet these ones were still better. I like to eat the bone marrow at the end of the bone and a lot of the times they are too rubbery and hard for me to chew, after I'm done with them my jaw hurts. These were soft and the meat slid straight off the bone. It was so yummy. The only gripe I have, is that I like my meat with some sort of vegetables or salad but they only offered bread. It would be better if they made their own bread, like most meat places I've had, but they just gave us slices of wonder bread. Other than that, fantastic!
After our meaty breakfast, we went canoeing at the Colorado River. As we head to get our canoe, we see a huge swan who was just standing there letting people know who really owns this river. It didn't care if people came up to it or not, but it was so big that people admired it but didn't touch. We kindly go around the swan to get through and get our canoes. It was really serine. The sun was shining, and we took great pictures.
We decided to turn in some random nook and go through.
At some point we had a beautiful view of the city and the river.
Afterwards we head to Graffiti park. It is a park that has a row of walls on a hill. The walls are covered with graffiti and Aura told me that the pictures change all the time because people keep drawing over them. Some pictures were meh and others were a masterpiece.
After that we head to the Alamo Drafthouse. It is a movie theatre where you can eat dinner while watching a movie. They have quite a few of these in Austin and Aura tells me it is the thing to do. We get there and take silly pictures with props that were put up for upcoming movies.
Britt meets with us and we go see Moana. You order inside the movie theatre, the problem is that the table was supposed to have lights but it wasn't working so we had to use our phones for light. You have to write down on a slip of paper of what you want to order so that you don't talk and be distracting to the patrons next to you. However, fumbling with the phone and pencil makes the process twice as long and is probably more distracting. I'm sure there can be an easier way, Ipads maybe? I ordered a bunch of fried things and Aura made me try fried pickles. All was good and the movie was great. Moana was much better than I expected, a definite recommendation.
After the theatre we go down to a plaza. There were Christmas lights all over and as soon as we come in, a teenager approaches me and asks if I would like hot chocolate? The plaza was outside in Austin and it was at night, yes I'd like some hot chocolate! He celebrates a bit, happy that he got a customer and brings me over to the counter where he serves me hot chocolate with chocolate syrup and marshmallows. Yumm! We take a seat right outside of Mozart's Coffee Roasters, where the hot chocolate came from, and proceeded to watch the light show.
It was really neat, this is the first time this year that I got into the holiday spirit.
12/01/2016 Thursday
Longhorn Caverns
The next morning, Aura and I head up to Long Horn Caverns in Burnet Texas. The drive was about 1.5 hours. We get there pretty early, get our tickets and wander around outside. There were ruins of old buildings. These buildings were built by the government so that people can stay there while working. The government hired a bunch of people during the great depression to dig out the caverns from mud and water. The project took about 2 years.
The person in concessions lets us know that we are one of the lucky ones because our guide is an actual geologist and will tell us more personal information on the tour. Our guide gathers us and we go into the cave. I couldn't have asked for a better tour guide, he had jokes, personal storries.
Turns out that The caverns were first used by thieves as a hideout and then this one was used by a booze smuggler during the prohibition. He had all sorts of parties in there with wooden floors as dance floors. People traveled miles through mud to go into this underground dance hall. There were pictures of women wearing fancy white dresses with the bottom covered with mud as well as their high heels. Once the prohibition was over, the people stopped coming so the smuggler had to leave.
Also at one point, some Native Americans preoccupied the caves. They were known to be very superstitious and never went to the really dark sides of the caverns, only where the light shined through. They kidnapped a very rich mans daughter for ransom but 3 brave Texas rangers repelled down and saved her. She ended up marrying one of her rescuers.
We went far into the caves, I remembered the caverns that I went to in Missouri but this one seemed to go on longer and had more things to see. Such as bats! There was about 25 of them and they were all sleeping. They were the 2nd smallest bats in the world.
There was a rock sediment shaped like a dog said to protect the dance hall of the cave. You'd think someone has carved it out, but according to the guide, many scientists did the research and this dog was formed 100% naturally. It was moved from deep inside the cave to guard the big room.
While walking back around to the entrance, the tour guide started telling us his experiences while working there and the stupid questions he used to get. One of them being from a call that was made, "Are the caverns still located at the same place?" Another, while he was doing a tour, "How many undiscovered caverns are out there?" To which he replied, "All of them." This reminded me of some stupid questions I had to answer while working in a call center.
After the Longhorn Caverns, we drove back to Austin and went to Lady Lake Park. A beautiful park which kind of looks like Lake Balboa Park in Los Angeles, but much much bigger.
After walking around a bit, we head back to Auras to rest a bit. Then off to Broken Spoke Hall to do some good ol' country dancin. We get there early so we can take a class to get some moves down. The class was lead by the owner of the bar. She was a 60 year old blonde snappy Texan girl. She was a proud grandmother who didn't have a filter whatsoever. She warned, "If I see any of you country dancing side to side, I'm going to come up to you and slap you hard in the ass to get you to stop, I don't care who looks you deserve to be treated like a baby." At one point she looks over to Aura, and tells her how to do a step, and Aura replies, "Yes ma'am." The grandma girl looked at Aura with a no you didn't stance. "Who are you calling ma'am young lady!? You look like your 14 years old, how do you like that?" To which Aura replied, "I like that a lot actually, thank you." I can never understand why people get so offended when others call them sir or ma'am. It's a sign of respect. I speak like that to my co-workers all the time, doesn't matter if they are old or young. I also see that the older generation are the ones who mainly get upset by it, maybe it used to have a different meaning. Overall the Grandma was a great teacher and we learned our steps.
My other friend Jessica shows up to hang out. You may remember her from my previous Utah trip. She decided to also move to Texas very recently. We were hanging out and dancing all night. It was good to catch up and hang out again with old friends. Jessica looks at us and tells us that she saw Bill Murray walk in. We don't really pay much attention to it until we realized that we were actually dancing on the same dance floor as him. He was partying hard with 3 girls no older than 25.
I wish we could have hung out with Jessica longer but we had to be in San Antonio the next day so we had to say our goodbyes.
12/02/2016 Friday
San Antonio
Aura head on to San Antonio. It is another 1.5 hour drive and halfway there is a place called Jacobs Well. It starts to rain, but that doesn't stop us from hiking to the natural Well. It was neat, we had to go through very slipper rocks and squeeze in between to boulders to get there. I couldn't even turn around at one point being in between the boulders. The well wasn't a far hike at all.
On the way back, two people stopped us and asked which way to the well. I point and tell them it's not much further. They go on. I later noticed that they were a bit oversized and there is no way that they would be able to get through the boulders. Oh well, I'm sure there is another way. The next thing on the itinerary was the zip lining. Unfortunately they were closed because of the rain, so we continue to drive.
We get to San Antonio and call my friends Rahul and Amma, they were busy at the time and weren't expecting us until after, but since we got rained out we got there earlier. Aura wanted some Peach Cobbler so we go to a famous chain in Texas called Rudys. I don't think I've ever had peach cobbler before, it was pretty good but I think I like pies better. Cobblers have more fruit than crust but I would prefer more crust. I googled on what else we can do and find another cavern a half hour away. We decide to go there.
We get to the Natural Bridge Caverns just in time for the last tour. This cavern wasn't as pretty as the Long Horn, but it seemed more hands on. Instead of going in and walking through in the same elavation, this one went deep down. We felt a lot of the humidity being down there.
At some point they turned off the lights so we can experience pure darkness for a few minutes. It is so dark, that your eyes aren't able to adjust and with no light whatsoever coming in, no matter how long you stay there, it would still be pitch black. I moved my fingers in front of my face and though I could see them, but the tour guide says that it's your mind playing tricks on you. You think you can see them because you know what it would look like and your brain is filling in the gaps, but all you see is darkness and nothing more. This is how animals lost their sight living here and evolved to live without it. We also got to hold one of the limestones.
When we were done, we headed to Rahul's and Amma's place. We get stuck in traffic and it takes us a good 2 hours to get there. Rahul later explains to me that San Antonio doesn't really have light sensors like we do in Los Angeles so the lights are timed and not very efficiently. We finally get to his place and meet up with Amma and Rahul. Their two sons Sage and Zane and their (Ammas) mom Patty. They live in a huge two story house of a gated community. Zane and mom stay home, and the rest of us go to Whataburger. A place like In n Out for Texas even though Texas now has In n Out anyway. Point of the story is that Whataburger would probably be the top 10 burger places out there, but it's still not as good as In n Out.
With a full stomache, we head over to Extreme Escape. An escape room that is family friendly. We have them in Los Angeles, but these ones were better themed. The room we were in was dressed up as a ship. We were put into a brig because we were trying to insite a mutiny. We had 1 hour to find a way out. At one point we got stuck and couldn't find a way out. We knew that we had to get a key to open a chest which contained the last magnetic name plackard to put on the wall to get to the next clue. We could not for the life of us find this key. We find a rock that had a shape of the key and ask if anyone had seen it? We all just assumed that someone got the key out of the rock and used it, but none of us did. Which means that they were supposed to put the key in the rock, but they didn't. We were keyless. With 30 seconds left, all hope seemed lost, we would be trapped in this brigg forever! Until Aura has a bright idea. These coins that we recovered earlier have magnets in them, let's just put them up on the plackard place. It worked! The trap door openned to reveal the key to the last chest. We solved the rest of the puzzles and literally with 2 seconds left we got out.
We went back to Rahuls place to celebrate and slept over.
12/03/2016 Saturday
The Alamo
The next day we went to checkout the Alamo. At this point it was pouring rain. We went inside the Alamo. Just an empty old Mexican Church place. You walk to the back and see some old school tents. Nothing too special, you can walk through everything within 20 minutes.
The history is of course what makes it interesting. Remember the Alamo, remember how it was protected from thousands by a mere hundreds of people. They had all the names of all the American lives that were lost. I think at this point it would be pretty cool to have the Mexican names as well to pay our respects to all who died. My idea may not be the most popular, I understand that we need heros. In the gift shop, there was a pretty cool diaharama of a visual on what the war looked like.
We proceed walking in the rain onto The Riverwalk. It's a river that goes through a plaza for a few blocks. A beautiful design.
The rain starts to really come down, so we decide to get some cover in Marco's Pizza. Rahul's favorite Pizza joint.
It was good, but I think I like Dominoes better. We eat and on the itinerary we were supposed to go to Six Flags Fiesta. Patty works there, and she was nice enough to get us all tickets but we got rained out. Instead we went back to Rahuls place to play board games. Which was fun too. Patty gives me the tickets anyway and says that they are still good for Six Flags Magic Mountain in Los Angeles. Great! Who wants to go to Magic Mountain with me? After playing about 5 different board games we decide to go out again. This time to Lolli and Pops, a candy store. We got ourselves a few treats.
After the candy store, we get tickets go to 3 fun museums almost like it was in Russia. The first was the Guinness Records museum. It was really fun.
My favorite part was where they talked about the video game facts. "Super Mario Bros" is the best selling video game of all time. They had an arcade version of it, and a lot of other old games like The Simpsons and Gallactica. You can play all of them for free as much as you want! We played a bit and went on to the next attraction which was Tomb Rider 3d. It's exactly like the toy story ride in Disneyland where you go on a slowly moving ride while shooting ghouls and ghosts with a laser gun. The final attraction was a haunted house. This was a pretty good one. At one point you go into an elavator and you push the button to go the next level and the doors open just to have something pop out and close again so you can go to your actual floor. I thought that was neat. After all said and done, we had to go back to Austin so I can rest a bit and fly back to Los Angeles.
12/04/2016 Sunday
Back to Los Angeles
Aura and Britt drop me off at the airport. We say our goodbyes and off to LA I go. The airport was nice and small so I got through without any problems. This time I completely forgot to print out the tickets and for some reason I couldn't get a text from Delta like last time. So they just printed one out for me as I checked in my big luggage and paid my $25 fee. I usually have some story of a delay here or something wrong with the airport but this time it was pretty straight forward. This airplane had movies and tv shows to watch and after 3 hours I was home.
Thank you Aura for having me and showing and driving me around. I loved that you were set on following the Itinerary. Nice meeting Britt as well. Thank you to the Pawa (Rahuls) family for showing me around San Antonio. Thank you to Patty for the tickets. It was nice seeing all of you and can't wait to see you here in Los Angeles again next time you come to visit.
Things I still need to do in Texas:
Go to Arlington Six Flags
Swim in Jacobs well
Colorado you better have snow to snowboard on because you are next!
View all the Texas photos here
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Texas 11/29/2016 - 12/04/2016
topgun92000- December 20th, 2016
My Itinerary:
Austin
Delta Flight 5747 Leave LAX 5:55pm Terminal 5 Gate 50B
Arrive in Austin 10:55pm Gate 4
Wednesday Nov. 30th.
Eat Franklin BBQ.
Go canoing.
Longhorn Caves
South Congress Bridge Bats
Thursday December 1st.
Hiking
Graffiti wall
East 6th st.
Country Dancing
Dinner Movie
Friday Dec. 2nd
http://www.wimberleyzipline.com/zipline_info/index.html
Jacobs well
Rahuls place
Escape room
Saturday Dec. 3rd
Alamo Hours 9:00 am till 4:00 pm
River Walk
Magic Mountain hours, 2:00pm till 10:00pm
Eat Texas BBQ.
Go back to Auras
Sunday Dec. 4th
Leave Austin 12:36pm Delta
Arrive LA 2:05 pm Delta
My Check-ins:
Tomb Rider 3d.
December 3 at 6:42pm · San Antonio, TX ·
Score 12387
checked in to Guinness World Records Museum.
December 3 at 6:41pm · San Antonio, TX ·
checked in to Lolli and Pops At La Cantera with Aura Castro and 2 others.
December 3 at 5:07pm · San Antonio, TX ·
eating pizza at Marco's Pizza (Helotes, TX) with Aura Castro and 2 others.
December 3 at 11:33am · Helotes, TX ·
checked in to The San Antonio River Walk with Aura Castro and 2 others.
December 3 at 10:22am · San Antonio, TX ·
Leon Mass checked in to The Alamo with Aura Castro and 2 others.
December 3 at 9:49am · San Antonio, TX ·
checked in to Extreme Escape with Aura Castro and 2 others.
December 2 at 7:09pm · San Antonio, TX ·
eating Whataburger at Whataburger with Aura Castro and 2 others.
December 2 at 5:20pm · San Antonio, TX ·
In n out better but still good
Natural Bridge Caverns with Leon Mass.
December 2 at 3:02pm · San Antonio, TX ·
Largest cavern in Texas!
eating peach cobbler at Rudy's "Country Store" and Bar-B-Q (24152 W Ih 10, San Antonio) with Aura Castro.
December 2 at 12:29pm · San Antonio, TX ·
What's the diff between cobbler and pie?
checked in to Jacob's Well with Aura Castro.
December 2 at 10:04am ·
Welly well well
dancing with Aura Castro at Broken Spoke Dancehall.
December 1 at 7:35pm · Austin, TX ·
Country dancin'
Lady Bird Lake with Aura Castro.
December 1 at 3:04pm · Austin, TX ·
Serene.
Longhorn Cavern State Park with Aura Castro.
December 1 at 1:11pm · Burnet, TX ·
Pretttyyyy
eating hot chocolate at Mozart's Coffee Roasters with Aura Castro.
November 30 at 6:59pm · Austin, TX ·
Light show
checked in to Alamo Drafthouse Slaughter Lane with Aura Castro.
November 30 at 4:30pm · Austin, TX ·
Watching Moana
checked in to Austin Grafitti Park with Aura Castro.
November 30 at 2:27pm · Austin, TX ·
checked in to Texas Rowing Center.
November 30 at 11:43am · Austin, TX ·
Paddle down the Colorado River.
added 2 new photos — eating Texas BBQ at Franklin Barbecue with Aura Castro.
November 30 at 9:57am · Austin, TX ·
Starting out with the best ribs i have ever tasted. Well worth the 2 hour wait... ya'll!
11/29/2016 Tuesday
The Flight To Austin
I decided to go to Texas to visit some of my friends. I got ready and packed as usual. Everything is pretty much automatic for me now. My roomate/friend takes me to the flyaway and I take that shuttle to LAX. I of course did forget my ticket but found out that with Delta you can use your cell phone and they just scan that instead of the ticket itself. Felt kind of weird but futuristic. Thankfully my phone was fully charged. If it wasn't I'm sure they can print one out for you anyway. I come to stand in line to check-in my bag. I have one big suit case and a backpack. I also forgot to check if there was 1 free bag check-in or not. In this case it wasn't so I had to pay $25 for it to go there and $25 to come back. Oh well, the airport just keeps teaching me lessons. I paid the $25 and got to the gate. I had about 1.5 hours left so I grabbed some snacks and went onto the LAX wi-fi which was nice. 15 minutes before lift-off my plane isn't there still. The attendant assured us that the plane will come and we will still make it on time. The plane did finally come and we went in. The captain told us that we actually wouldn't make it on time because we are still waiting for some people and we will be about 10 minutes late. I wish I would have known this earlier so I can text my pick-up so she wouldn't have been waiting for me. Oh well, 10 minutes is nothing to be afraid of. We lift off. Of course this plane doesn't have any entertainment available but it does have wif-fi which you have to pay for. Yet again, this isn't said on the website. Oh well, I had entertainment on my laptop and watched a movie. To my surprise, however, they did serve cookies and drinks which was nice. About 2 hours later we land in Austin and as soon as we land, my pick-up, Aura, calls me. I answer the phone and she is asking if I'm almost out of the airport because she is waiting for me outside so she doesn't have to pay to park and doesn't get moved if she is waiting for me for too long. I told her that there was of course a delay and I need to pick up my luggage. I go to the luggage pick-up area and see that there is luggage coming in from L.A. Ok, this is a small airport, I'll just get it quick and be right out. I don't see my luggage. Waiting for a second drop, nothing else is dropping. There was a couple standing also waiting for their luggage and I ask them if they are coming in from L.A. and still waiting for their luggage? They respond to me saying no, they have arrived early from Utah and are just hanging out until their luggage comes. I went up to an attendant and she told me that the luggage dispenser I am looking for is all the way down to the end of the luggage area. I think to myself, great, maybe this airport is a lot bigger than I thought and I am going to waste a lot of time looking for this. I start walking, after maybe 30 steps I get to the end of the airport and there was my luggage. I laughed to myself, why did she say "all the way to the end?" I call Aura and tell her I am coming out. She comes to pick me up and she drives me to her place where I will be staying for the next few days.
The first thing I notice is the gas prices. $1.89 compared to like $3.09 in Los Angeles. I thought that this gas station was closed so they just didn't update the prices, but no this is how much it was. Supply and demand I suppose. We get to Auras place and start catching up. Her boyfriend Britt joins us and we further on the conversation. We go over the itinerary and Aura states that we need to wake up pretty early to go to Franklyns BBQ because it is pretty famous and they serve the meat in the morning and stop until they run out.
11/30/2016 Wednesday
Austin, Texas
Aura and I wake up and head to Franklyns. As she told me, there was already a line and the place wasn't even open yet. It was 7:30am and the place opens at 9:00am. She tells me, if this was a weekend, we needed to be here even earlier. This place better be good for us to wait 1.5 hours just to sit down. Some of the workers were already there setting up, they come up to people in the line and kindly tell us that there are chairs stowed and we can grab them if we would like to sit. So we did. We relax, I tell Aura about our mutual friends in and out of Los Angeles and what they are up to.
There is another person straight ahead of us who is visiting from San Francisco who also joined in on our conversation. One of the employees came up to us to see what we were having so the line can go pretty quick and to make sure they have enough. The time actually went by pretty quickly and before we knew it, it was 9 and the line started to move. We get up to the counter with our new friend from San Francisco. At the counter, they put out free samples. First we tasted samples of the turkey they serve. This was already the best turkey I have ever had, I was very impressed. I couldn't believe how succulent the turkey is. This place was known for their briskets and we also had a sample of that. The briskets were good, but not the best I've tasted. I ended up ordering the ribs with a potato salad and Aura ordered the brisket. We sat down, waited a bit and the food came out.
Oh man, the place definitely lives up to the hype. Best BBQ ribs I've had. Great potato salad too! The last time I remember having ribs this good is in Missouri, and yet these ones were still better. I like to eat the bone marrow at the end of the bone and a lot of the times they are too rubbery and hard for me to chew, after I'm done with them my jaw hurts. These were soft and the meat slid straight off the bone. It was so yummy. The only gripe I have, is that I like my meat with some sort of vegetables or salad but they only offered bread. It would be better if they made their own bread, like most meat places I've had, but they just gave us slices of wonder bread. Other than that, fantastic!
After our meaty breakfast, we went canoeing at the Colorado River. As we head to get our canoe, we see a huge swan who was just standing there letting people know who really owns this river. It didn't care if people came up to it or not, but it was so big that people admired it but didn't touch. We kindly go around the swan to get through and get our canoes. It was really serine. The sun was shining, and we took great pictures.
We decided to turn in some random nook and go through.
At some point we had a beautiful view of the city and the river.
Afterwards we head to Graffiti park. It is a park that has a row of walls on a hill. The walls are covered with graffiti and Aura told me that the pictures change all the time because people keep drawing over them. Some pictures were meh and others were a masterpiece.
After that we head to the Alamo Drafthouse. It is a movie theatre where you can eat dinner while watching a movie. They have quite a few of these in Austin and Aura tells me it is the thing to do. We get there and take silly pictures with props that were put up for upcoming movies.
Britt meets with us and we go see Moana. You order inside the movie theatre, the problem is that the table was supposed to have lights but it wasn't working so we had to use our phones for light. You have to write down on a slip of paper of what you want to order so that you don't talk and be distracting to the patrons next to you. However, fumbling with the phone and pencil makes the process twice as long and is probably more distracting. I'm sure there can be an easier way, Ipads maybe? I ordered a bunch of fried things and Aura made me try fried pickles. All was good and the movie was great. Moana was much better than I expected, a definite recommendation.
After the theatre we go down to a plaza. There were Christmas lights all over and as soon as we come in, a teenager approaches me and asks if I would like hot chocolate? The plaza was outside in Austin and it was at night, yes I'd like some hot chocolate! He celebrates a bit, happy that he got a customer and brings me over to the counter where he serves me hot chocolate with chocolate syrup and marshmallows. Yumm! We take a seat right outside of Mozart's Coffee Roasters, where the hot chocolate came from, and proceeded to watch the light show.
It was really neat, this is the first time this year that I got into the holiday spirit.
12/01/2016 Thursday
Longhorn Caverns
The next morning, Aura and I head up to Long Horn Caverns in Burnet Texas. The drive was about 1.5 hours. We get there pretty early, get our tickets and wander around outside. There were ruins of old buildings. These buildings were built by the government so that people can stay there while working. The government hired a bunch of people during the great depression to dig out the caverns from mud and water. The project took about 2 years.
The person in concessions lets us know that we are one of the lucky ones because our guide is an actual geologist and will tell us more personal information on the tour. Our guide gathers us and we go into the cave. I couldn't have asked for a better tour guide, he had jokes, personal storries.
Turns out that The caverns were first used by thieves as a hideout and then this one was used by a booze smuggler during the prohibition. He had all sorts of parties in there with wooden floors as dance floors. People traveled miles through mud to go into this underground dance hall. There were pictures of women wearing fancy white dresses with the bottom covered with mud as well as their high heels. Once the prohibition was over, the people stopped coming so the smuggler had to leave.
Also at one point, some Native Americans preoccupied the caves. They were known to be very superstitious and never went to the really dark sides of the caverns, only where the light shined through. They kidnapped a very rich mans daughter for ransom but 3 brave Texas rangers repelled down and saved her. She ended up marrying one of her rescuers.
We went far into the caves, I remembered the caverns that I went to in Missouri but this one seemed to go on longer and had more things to see. Such as bats! There was about 25 of them and they were all sleeping. They were the 2nd smallest bats in the world.
There was a rock sediment shaped like a dog said to protect the dance hall of the cave. You'd think someone has carved it out, but according to the guide, many scientists did the research and this dog was formed 100% naturally. It was moved from deep inside the cave to guard the big room.
While walking back around to the entrance, the tour guide started telling us his experiences while working there and the stupid questions he used to get. One of them being from a call that was made, "Are the caverns still located at the same place?" Another, while he was doing a tour, "How many undiscovered caverns are out there?" To which he replied, "All of them." This reminded me of some stupid questions I had to answer while working in a call center.
After the Longhorn Caverns, we drove back to Austin and went to Lady Lake Park. A beautiful park which kind of looks like Lake Balboa Park in Los Angeles, but much much bigger.
After walking around a bit, we head back to Auras to rest a bit. Then off to Broken Spoke Hall to do some good ol' country dancin. We get there early so we can take a class to get some moves down. The class was lead by the owner of the bar. She was a 60 year old blonde snappy Texan girl. She was a proud grandmother who didn't have a filter whatsoever. She warned, "If I see any of you country dancing side to side, I'm going to come up to you and slap you hard in the ass to get you to stop, I don't care who looks you deserve to be treated like a baby." At one point she looks over to Aura, and tells her how to do a step, and Aura replies, "Yes ma'am." The grandma girl looked at Aura with a no you didn't stance. "Who are you calling ma'am young lady!? You look like your 14 years old, how do you like that?" To which Aura replied, "I like that a lot actually, thank you." I can never understand why people get so offended when others call them sir or ma'am. It's a sign of respect. I speak like that to my co-workers all the time, doesn't matter if they are old or young. I also see that the older generation are the ones who mainly get upset by it, maybe it used to have a different meaning. Overall the Grandma was a great teacher and we learned our steps.
My other friend Jessica shows up to hang out. You may remember her from my previous Utah trip. She decided to also move to Texas very recently. We were hanging out and dancing all night. It was good to catch up and hang out again with old friends. Jessica looks at us and tells us that she saw Bill Murray walk in. We don't really pay much attention to it until we realized that we were actually dancing on the same dance floor as him. He was partying hard with 3 girls no older than 25.
I wish we could have hung out with Jessica longer but we had to be in San Antonio the next day so we had to say our goodbyes.
12/02/2016 Friday
San Antonio
Aura head on to San Antonio. It is another 1.5 hour drive and halfway there is a place called Jacobs Well. It starts to rain, but that doesn't stop us from hiking to the natural Well. It was neat, we had to go through very slipper rocks and squeeze in between to boulders to get there. I couldn't even turn around at one point being in between the boulders. The well wasn't a far hike at all.
On the way back, two people stopped us and asked which way to the well. I point and tell them it's not much further. They go on. I later noticed that they were a bit oversized and there is no way that they would be able to get through the boulders. Oh well, I'm sure there is another way. The next thing on the itinerary was the zip lining. Unfortunately they were closed because of the rain, so we continue to drive.
We get to San Antonio and call my friends Rahul and Amma, they were busy at the time and weren't expecting us until after, but since we got rained out we got there earlier. Aura wanted some Peach Cobbler so we go to a famous chain in Texas called Rudys. I don't think I've ever had peach cobbler before, it was pretty good but I think I like pies better. Cobblers have more fruit than crust but I would prefer more crust. I googled on what else we can do and find another cavern a half hour away. We decide to go there.
We get to the Natural Bridge Caverns just in time for the last tour. This cavern wasn't as pretty as the Long Horn, but it seemed more hands on. Instead of going in and walking through in the same elavation, this one went deep down. We felt a lot of the humidity being down there.
At some point they turned off the lights so we can experience pure darkness for a few minutes. It is so dark, that your eyes aren't able to adjust and with no light whatsoever coming in, no matter how long you stay there, it would still be pitch black. I moved my fingers in front of my face and though I could see them, but the tour guide says that it's your mind playing tricks on you. You think you can see them because you know what it would look like and your brain is filling in the gaps, but all you see is darkness and nothing more. This is how animals lost their sight living here and evolved to live without it. We also got to hold one of the limestones.
When we were done, we headed to Rahul's and Amma's place. We get stuck in traffic and it takes us a good 2 hours to get there. Rahul later explains to me that San Antonio doesn't really have light sensors like we do in Los Angeles so the lights are timed and not very efficiently. We finally get to his place and meet up with Amma and Rahul. Their two sons Sage and Zane and their (Ammas) mom Patty. They live in a huge two story house of a gated community. Zane and mom stay home, and the rest of us go to Whataburger. A place like In n Out for Texas even though Texas now has In n Out anyway. Point of the story is that Whataburger would probably be the top 10 burger places out there, but it's still not as good as In n Out.
With a full stomache, we head over to Extreme Escape. An escape room that is family friendly. We have them in Los Angeles, but these ones were better themed. The room we were in was dressed up as a ship. We were put into a brig because we were trying to insite a mutiny. We had 1 hour to find a way out. At one point we got stuck and couldn't find a way out. We knew that we had to get a key to open a chest which contained the last magnetic name plackard to put on the wall to get to the next clue. We could not for the life of us find this key. We find a rock that had a shape of the key and ask if anyone had seen it? We all just assumed that someone got the key out of the rock and used it, but none of us did. Which means that they were supposed to put the key in the rock, but they didn't. We were keyless. With 30 seconds left, all hope seemed lost, we would be trapped in this brigg forever! Until Aura has a bright idea. These coins that we recovered earlier have magnets in them, let's just put them up on the plackard place. It worked! The trap door openned to reveal the key to the last chest. We solved the rest of the puzzles and literally with 2 seconds left we got out.
We went back to Rahuls place to celebrate and slept over.
12/03/2016 Saturday
The Alamo
The next day we went to checkout the Alamo. At this point it was pouring rain. We went inside the Alamo. Just an empty old Mexican Church place. You walk to the back and see some old school tents. Nothing too special, you can walk through everything within 20 minutes.
The history is of course what makes it interesting. Remember the Alamo, remember how it was protected from thousands by a mere hundreds of people. They had all the names of all the American lives that were lost. I think at this point it would be pretty cool to have the Mexican names as well to pay our respects to all who died. My idea may not be the most popular, I understand that we need heros. In the gift shop, there was a pretty cool diaharama of a visual on what the war looked like.
We proceed walking in the rain onto The Riverwalk. It's a river that goes through a plaza for a few blocks. A beautiful design.
The rain starts to really come down, so we decide to get some cover in Marco's Pizza. Rahul's favorite Pizza joint.
It was good, but I think I like Dominoes better. We eat and on the itinerary we were supposed to go to Six Flags Fiesta. Patty works there, and she was nice enough to get us all tickets but we got rained out. Instead we went back to Rahuls place to play board games. Which was fun too. Patty gives me the tickets anyway and says that they are still good for Six Flags Magic Mountain in Los Angeles. Great! Who wants to go to Magic Mountain with me? After playing about 5 different board games we decide to go out again. This time to Lolli and Pops, a candy store. We got ourselves a few treats.
After the candy store, we get tickets go to 3 fun museums almost like it was in Russia. The first was the Guinness Records museum. It was really fun.
My favorite part was where they talked about the video game facts. "Super Mario Bros" is the best selling video game of all time. They had an arcade version of it, and a lot of other old games like The Simpsons and Gallactica. You can play all of them for free as much as you want! We played a bit and went on to the next attraction which was Tomb Rider 3d. It's exactly like the toy story ride in Disneyland where you go on a slowly moving ride while shooting ghouls and ghosts with a laser gun. The final attraction was a haunted house. This was a pretty good one. At one point you go into an elavator and you push the button to go the next level and the doors open just to have something pop out and close again so you can go to your actual floor. I thought that was neat. After all said and done, we had to go back to Austin so I can rest a bit and fly back to Los Angeles.
12/04/2016 Sunday
Back to Los Angeles
Aura and Britt drop me off at the airport. We say our goodbyes and off to LA I go. The airport was nice and small so I got through without any problems. This time I completely forgot to print out the tickets and for some reason I couldn't get a text from Delta like last time. So they just printed one out for me as I checked in my big luggage and paid my $25 fee. I usually have some story of a delay here or something wrong with the airport but this time it was pretty straight forward. This airplane had movies and tv shows to watch and after 3 hours I was home.
Thank you Aura for having me and showing and driving me around. I loved that you were set on following the Itinerary. Nice meeting Britt as well. Thank you to the Pawa (Rahuls) family for showing me around San Antonio. Thank you to Patty for the tickets. It was nice seeing all of you and can't wait to see you here in Los Angeles again next time you come to visit.
Things I still need to do in Texas:
Go to Arlington Six Flags
Swim in Jacobs well
Colorado you better have snow to snowboard on because you are next!
View all the Texas photos here
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