The Rest of Texas

Alright everyone, here’s the rest of Austin!

After we recovered from our night, we went to the Texas Statehouse and walked around downtown some, and then headed out of town to Mt. Bonnell, which overlooks the city. The statehouse was ok, basically they just opened it up to the public while no one was there working and let us wander around and look at paintings and things. Realized that I had forgotten that George Bush was a Texas governor back in the day, but I was reminded by his portrait up on the wall. Basically we just walked around in the air conditioning during the hottest part of the day and looked at old paintings.

Mt. Bonnell was cool, you drive out of the city and up the base of the mountain, then park on the side of the road and walk up about 100 or so stone steps to the summit, where you can walk around and look down at the Colorado River and a bunch of big fancy houses, and there’s also a great view of the Austin skyline. Not much to do there either, but it was our first day of no rain since we were in Tallahassee so it was satisfying just to be able to walk around outside. (Sidebar – I don’t have any pictures between St. Louis and the Willie Nelson concert because my batteries ran out in Missouri and I didn’t feel a pressing need to buy more until the show. But I have them now!!)

Waking up the next day, Sunday the 4th, was like waking up on Christmas morning!! But almost more exciting. I got up, got food, and got going before Dre had even stirred, which is completely understandable considering it was noon and we definitely hadn’t gotten home before 5 a.m. the previous night. There was a brief crisis when we realized that our host didn’t have a printer so we couldn’t print out our tickets, but fortunately there was an Office Max downtown that was open, even on a Sunday and a holiday, so that worked out absolutely fine. We also had some problems even finding the venue, called the Backyard at Bee Cave, but thanks to the fact my dad was home and by a computer we were able to get there fine. THEN we ran into more problems when the parking there was full and we had to drive to a giant shopping center and get shuttled over by a bus. At this point we had missed 2 of the bands I had really wanted to see, but there were so many more coming that I wasn’t too upset. Also, the fact that we had been able to listen to the concert on the Sirius Radio Willie Nelson station definitely helped.

We finally got there and had our minds absolutely blown. It was a small crowd (only 7,000) but an even smaller venue, and by 5 p.m. it started to get crowded, and only got more so as the night went on. Memorable highlights include Del Castillo (Latin/rock band who won the South by Southwest festival), Kris Kristofferson (who came on without even an announcement; I looked up and was like “Hey, these are some great songs, I like this guy a lot,” and then he started playing Sunday Morning Coming Down and I finally realized who he was), Jack Ingraham (made famous by Love You and Barefoot and Crazy) and Folk Uke, a 3-girl string band with hilarious, hilarious songs. I had been looking forward to David Allen Coe, one of the giants in country music writing, but he played all of his big hits, including the pop ones he wrote for Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow, which I already knew and didn’t really need to hear. Oh well.

Willie Nelson finally came on well after midnight and played all of my favorites right in a row at the beginning, which was very convenient for us because we were exhausted, dehydrated, starving and ready to go home. We were starving because the place ran out of most of its food by 7, so we had to settle for fried onions and tomatillo sauce on tortillas. At least it was free. Anyway, we stopped at a great diner on the way home as a special treat for lasting as long as we did and it was probably the most delicious food I’ve ever had in my life. Also, coffee, orange juice, and biscuits and gravy altogether only ran me about $7, so that was nice too. We finally got home around 2:30, fell into bed, and the next day started the first leg of our drive to Albuquerque.

Don’t worry, you’ll all hear about Albuquerque, Arizona, Las Vegas, Zion and Grand Canyons, and LA eventually. It’s coming, I promise!!

Yours in Wandering,
Katie