Our mornings started here, it was hard to leave this campsite...
To complete our tour of the gulf coast, we headed west to Galveston Island, TX. Here we camped at the Galveston Island State Park. The sites were right on the beach and had little shelters too. This was definetly the coolest campsite we’ve stayed on so far. The first day here we decided to just chill and wander the beach. In the afternoon while I had some work done on the car, Geoffrey and Nash explored the bay side of the park.
Late that evening, as we barbecued over our campfire, a large troop of cubscouts set up shop next to us. That was the beginning of the end of the beach. It had also become extremely windy so we built a little shelter with the volvo and a tarp. The next morning the cubscouts were throwing rocks at birds and being generally annoying while all the dads hung out in a shelter as far from the kids as they could get. We had hoped to stay one more night, but when we went to register, there was no more room at the inn. The campsite was booked. So, we headed up to Austin early.
First we made a brief stop in Houston at the Menil Collection. I had studied the Renzo Piano designed museum in Architecture which led to the trip, but the collection was quite grand. We particularly liked the surrealist work by Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, and Joseph Cornell.
Austin, TX was one of our favorite cities so far. Although our weather was grey and rainy, we could tell the city was very into the outdoors. It seemed that every bar and restaurant had large outdoor seating areas. Our camping situation here was not as ideal as the beach. We set up our tent next to some guys living out of their snowcone truck in a ghetto rv park. We had gotten a lot of great suggestions from Mateo and started with South Congress Street shopping. This area is super cute. We bought candy, vinyl, and coffee and explored the surrounding neighborhoods with Nashy. That evening we went to see some live music at the Mohawk bar. We saw the Crooks who were really great and two awesome opening bands. Around 1am we tried to find some gay cowboys at the Austin gay bars, but we somehow ended up in a gay latino club where there were no cowboys.
Geo buying Sean his birthday cupcake.
On Monday (my birthday) we went salvation army shopping and then got some delicious BBQ for lunch at Ironworks BBQ. Afterwards while walking Nash in a residential neighborhood, we happened upon a park that had the most beautiful clear creek surrounded by high stone walls. We enjoyed it so much that we decided to do our Austin installation there. About 15 minutes into it, Geoffrey cut himself pretty badly with a knife. Ouch! I had to rush him to the nearest hospital for stitches. A few hours later we decided to go back and finish. We just loved the installation and park that much!
Nashville hunts squirrels while we build the ladder.
That night we checked into our swanky hotel room (thanks Kevin and Lindsay) and had birthday dinner at Magnolia café south. Because we had overdosed on meat at lunch, we both ordered the accorn squash with curry veggies. OMG! The texans can do vegitarian too! Austin really treated us great and we got the best vibes everywhere we went. Thanks Austin!
Next stop, Dallas, TX!
