Don't mess with Texas

Hey y'all! So it's been a couple of days since we've been able to update on here, but we have been busy hanging out in Round Rock Texas watching baseball games, playing guitar hero, and doing a lot of (exhausting) jumping around on a trampoline. So first off.. we left New Orleans early on a beautiful, sunny Monday morning after getting some coffee and beignets at the famous Cafe Du Monde near the New Orleans waterfront in the French Quarter. It was nice to see New Orleans in the sun during the day, where we could see that the French Quarter was a very cool place full of character and charm. But in the spirit of road trips, we had to keep moving.. especially because we wanted to catch my cousin Cameron's last baseball game of the season at 6:00 Monday night.. a mere 500 miles away. The drive through the rest of Louisiana brought us through Baton Rouge and much of "Cajun country". I thought an interesting part of the drive was how often we were on these causeways kind of like bridges, because we were just surrounded by marshy lands and swamp. The farther west we drove the more things started to dry up, and the Texas state line caught us by surprise but then we were welcomed by our favorite state welcome center yet. As they say.. everything's bigger in Texas. The center even had boardwalk type walkways out back that you could go explore, which were built over a swamp filled with wildlife, it was like being at a zoo. The rest of the drive was less eventful, as we got a taste of just how big Texas is.. still another 4.5 hours to go and we are just covering a tiny fraction of the state. After passing through Houston we went through hundreds of miles of country filled with ranches and cattle.

So finally.. after about 9 hours in the car (much better than the day before) we arrived at the enormous baseball complex where Cameron had his baseball game at 6:00. It was great to get there and see him play, these kids are good! His team the SF Giants ended up winning the game and finishing off a great 10-4 season. Round Rock was a great stop for us, where we got to spend two nights with Riley, Cameron, my Uncle Pat, and Aunt Tracy. Their new house is absolutely beautiful, and seems to be in a great neighborhood that Bri and I took a walk through on Tuesday morning. We used Tuesday to relax and enjoy not being in the car, and waited for the kids to get home from school.. and then played all afternoon! Everything from swings, kicking a ball around, drawing, "trampolining", and watching Cameron crush Guitar Hero on expert. On Tuesday night we all went to the incredible Oasis restaurant overlooking Lake Travis.. the self-proclaimed and deserving "Sunset Capital of Texas". Sure enough we had a great sunset, great food, and a great time with the family. This is an area that is definitely not what you would expect when you think of Texas, and it is really a great place.

This morning (Wednesday) we are getting ready to take off on an easy drive to San Antonio where we will spend a night and enjoy the Riverwalk. It's only an hour and a half drive, so we hope to get there and spend some time relaxing by the pool, and walking around the city. This will be our final stop in Texas, before taking off on Thursday morning to make the grueling drive through Texas and into New Mexico.

More to come later so keep checking back! Thanks for all the comments, we really look forward to when we can get to the internet and update everyone to share what we have experienced. :)

-Dan