Texas! Days 5 and 6

After a long day at the Rodeo and Livestock Show, Mac and I took it a little easier on Wednesday. We started out the day by going to the Art Car Museum just down the street from Mac's parents' house.

Houston is known for its Art Car Parade and the museum does a great job of showcasing some of the cars from previous parades and also showing local art in its galleries. It's a small museum, but it was fun to stop by and see what they had to show.

Along the way, we stopped at a grocery store and I just had to take a photo of this display of soda saying "Let's Rodeo". Really, the whole town gets into it!

While we were out an about, we stopped at Taqueria Arandas for lunch and had some really good Mexican food. I think I'm starting to understand the subtle differences between Mexican, Tex-Mex and Cali-Mex. I'll pretty much take it any way, but Arandas featured cactus as one of its "meat" options for its burritos, so I got to try that and it was quite tasty! They also had aquas frescas and I got a cantaloupe one that was outstanding. Yum!

That evening, Mac and I headed out to Baytown to go to Cavender's Boot City to see if we could find some cowboy boots for me and a vest and bolo tie for Mac. It was a bit of a drive, but it was worth it. I got a great pair of cowboy boots (I'm amazed I don't have any photos) and Mac found a leather vest, but no bolo tie. On the way home from Baytown, Mac took a detour to show me the San Jacinto Monument. Sadly, it was closed by the time we got there (after dark), but we did see this great sign posted outside the park:

And here the barely-lit monument:

We'll have to put that on the list of things to see next time I'm in Houston, so I can get the full effect of the reflection pool, etc. And in case you were wondering, yes, it is taller than the Washington Monument and the reflecting pool is also bigger than the one in DC. This is Texas, after all.

On the way home from the monument, we got to go over the Ship Channel Bridge and really see all of the industry that's based on the access to the Ship Channel. Most of it is oil-based and it seriously looked like a city skyline, it was so bright!

When we first got to Houston Mac's dad showed us some articles he's saved talking about some new restaurants in town and one of them sounded particularly interesting. It was called Roost and Mac and I decided to stop for dinner after our little adventure. It was super tasty! We got these amazing "slow breads" that looked and tasted remarkably like huge soft pretzels. We got beet butter and blue cheese butter to go with it.

We also got a cauliflower "steak" which was just outstanding, a delicious potato soup, a jar of homemade pickles and then banana pudding for dessert. They also had a great selection of local beer, which was tasty, too! I'm so glad we tried this place.

On Thursday, March 1st, Mac and I woke up early and got out of the house by 9am to enjoy our big road trip day to Austin! It's about a three hour drive, and when we got to Austin we went straight to the Capitol area. It was a bit of an overcast day, but it's still a beautiful building:

We had lunch in the cafeteria, which is open to the public, but clearly caters to staffers in the building. Then we took a guided tour of the building. Here's a view of the dome, which, by the way, is taller than the dome of the Capitol building in DC (it's Texas, remember, everything is bigger!).

The details throughout the building were really neat. All of the hinges on the bigger doors looked like this:

And even though it was overcast, it was still quite warm and flowers were blooming around the Capitol. This was a promising sign since our next stop was at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center. Here are some Texas Mountain Laurel blooms on the grounds of the Capitol:

After leaving the Capitol area, we drove a little out of town to get the Wildflower Center. Here's some of the highlights from the couple hours we spent there. Here's some wild Phlox:

And Mac taking in the amazing scent of these honeysuckle blooms:

They also had a butterfly and moth hatchery.

And BLUEBONNETS! My goal for going out to Austin was to see some Texas Bluebonnets. We were a couple weeks early to see them in their full glory, but I was so happy to see some blooming!

We also took a walk around the meadow and saw these cool heart-shaped cacti:

And MORE Bluebonnets!!

And turtles.
After the Wildflower Center, we drove back into Austin to the SoCo (South Congress Ave.) area of Austin. It's a hip little shopping district and we happen to be there for First Thursday, so there was live music and gallery openings and people all over the place. Our first stop was at Bird's Barbershop to get Mac a beard trim. Here's the before photo:

One of the perks of going to Bird's is that they give out a free beer with every service. Since we had to wait, she gave us each a beer! Score!

Beard trim in progress!

And in the end, it only cost him $3. That's right, two beers and a beard trim would have normally been $5, but since Mac is a student, he got $2 off. Quite an amazing deal! And here's the final result. Pretty snazzy, huh?

We ate at Mighty Cone, one of the mainstay food trucks of the SoCo area. It was quite tasty - we got an order of fried pickles (in a cone, of course), and then an amazing fried avocado wrap with this wonderful spicy slaw. Yum!

We also enjoyed just walking around, doing a little shopping (Mac found an awesome vintage bolo tie), getting a drink, and finally grabbing some dinner.

This is outside a little coffeeshop called Jo's where we stopped to get some iced tea and listen to live music:

And this was outside a cute little store called "Monkey See, Monkey Do". Mac took the name pretty seriously:

After hanging out in SoCo, Mac had a little adventure to take care of. Our friend Candy has a friend who lives in Austin and she gave Mac a birthday crown to give to her friend, preferably as a singing telegram. So we had an address and a phone number and drove to this woman's house. When we were outside, Mac called her to explain that he was a friend of Candy's and had a special delivery. He went up and did a whole singing telegram for her, doing a great rendition of Happy Birthday. She was thoroughly surprised, for sure! It was the perfect way to honor "Keeping Austin Weird" and a great way to end the day. Then we drove all the way back to Houston, finally getting home sometime after midnight. It was a great little roadtrip!