Louisiananana-na-na-na-naaaa, you can’t catch us! Ok, maybe Snowball isn’t that fast… but she was faster than that hibernating/maybedead gator, am I right? That’s fast enough for us. It’s two days till CHRISTMAS and that means it’s time to say goodbye to the Gulf.
We took another ferry over a shipping channel in Cameron Parish, because apparently that’s another theme to this trip.
And there were DOLPHINS rising out of the water! Not full-on-fully jumping, but we saw some fins. And by that I mean “I saw some fins and Jess kept missing it and thought I was making it up just to mess with her”. hahahaha!
After some authentic Tex-Mex (is that a thing? I think it’s a thing, so I’m going with it.) in Port Arthur, we high-tailed it to meet up with Jess’ BFF since childhood. She and her new husband were sooooooo kind to let us crash their first Christmas as a married couple and dear lord baby jesus, the food was heavenly. We spent days eating leftovers from the Christmas Eve Feast. Insert drool emoji here.
It’s such a hard life being a Bee. 
Here’s the Official Christmas Cookoff Gameplan
We spent a few days relaxing and playing games, then it was once again time to make like a tree and leaf. First stop: Bastrop State Park just outside Austin. We settled in by making camp like the professional campers that we are, went on a little walk around, made some friends… then it started raining, so we looked at the forecast.
I’ve spent the last few months amazed at what we’ll put up with when it comes to exposure: freezing cold? another blanket and no problem! thunderstorm? pretty flashy lights! raining for 2 days straight? sounds like we’re watching some movies! Tornado watch? Uh… come again for big fudge?
Turns out that’s where we draw the line. I figure it this way: I’m fine with some risks, life itself is dangerous. But choosing to camp in a soft-sided tent when you know a potentially tornado-bearing storm is coming just seems like asking for trouble. Especially when you can spend $150 on a hotel room and make all the worries melt away. It was kinda a no-brainer: Downtown Austin, here we come!!!
Crisis averted: we have tacos 
We were going romp around Austin tomorrow anyway, so this just seems like an excellent solution. So after a beautiful night’s sleep in our comfy hotel bed listening to the wind and rain and hail, we got to it.
Saw the statehouse 
Walked around UT Austin’s campus 
And holy-flooding, batman!
After nearly a full day in Austin, we left for Pedernales State Park, and jogged around their short waterfall hike right before sunset.
Another early morning and we were off the San Antonio and this crowdpleaser:
I remember the Alamo. What I didn’t remember, however, was the College Football Bowl Game Schedule. Turns out that we arrived in town just in time to run into THRONGS of Iowa State fans who wanted to see the sights the morning before their team played in the Alamo Bowl. The line to go through the church building? Around the block. Personal space? None whatsoever. It was a cool place and a fun history lesson, but if you ever go there maybe you should try to plan around the crowds a little better than we did.
On a historical note: it’s pretty mind-blowing to think that less than 200 years ago, half of this country was so… uninhabited. Unexplored. At least by Europeans. You know? This entire event, the massacre of early Texans by the Mexican army, all took place in an area less than a couple city blocks. Their combined ‘armies’ only had around 2,000 people. Here we are visiting the place with more people than fought there originally. Manifest destiny, indeed.
From the Alamo, we made our way to The Cove for some food and so we could figure out where we were going that night. Highly recommended! Great food and beer/wine selection. And you can do your laundry and get your car washed all in the same place! We figured our next few days would be pretty sparse on the cell-service front, so we planned ahead way longer than usual: like 3 days.
We pulled in to Kickapoo Cavern State Park just as the sun was going down. We made camp, ate dinner, showered, Bee made friends with the locals:
The next day was a big driving day. But first…
We spent the next 8 hours following the southern border and the Rio Grande. It was so beautiful!
The longest Federal Government Shutdown in history was a bit of a problem for us when it came time to enter Big Bend National Park.
The park gates were still open, so we drove through, but there weren’t any services, and we didn’t get to stay the night. (This changed later. When the shutdown continued past a week, they had to close most National Parks because people were being idiots about basic things like obeying the rules and not littering.) No biggie, there’s another park right next door: the oh-so-cleverly-named Big Bend Ranch State Park.
This park was SO COOL! There are like 10 primitive campgrounds dispersed over literally thousands of acres, all very remote. A ton of hiking/biking/horseback riding trails, and even more offroad vehicle trails. It’s a bit of a journey to get there on some pretty hairy roads, however.
I wish we would have had more time to explore this place. But the weather was already not very pleasant, and it was projected to get worse in the next couple days, so we had to move on after 2 nights. We still got a pretty hike and sunset, though!
Jess’ favorite cactus: the purple beavertail 
We live in some pretty amazing places. I want this post to inspire all of you to get out there and explore them! Unless there’s tornadoes coming, of course. 😉
Next stop: NEW MEXICO!
"Purposefully Unrushed" 