The Spectater

Total distance driven: 7,746 km
Cheapest gas: $3.25/gallon (Houston, TX)
Most expensive gas: $3.799/gallon (Iowa Park, TX)
Most expensive pastry: $9.19 (3-lb cinnamon bun)
Best BBQ: Franklin BBQ in Austin, TX
Best cupcakes: Cupprimo in Austin, TX
Favourite hotel: Hyatt Place in Overland Park, KS
Least favourite hotel: Crowne Plaza Houston North
Hottest city: Houston (San Antonio was a close second)
Coldest city: Minneapolis
Best rest stop: the modern rest stops in Iowa (clean, good facilities and free wifi!)
Most played songs on the radio: Someone Like You (Adele); Moves like Jagger (Maroon 5); anything by Bruno Mars; Pumped up Kicks (Foster the People)

Other honourable mentions and recommendations:
Scrumbscious Burgers and Pies (Mesquite, TX)
NASA Level 9 tour (Houston, TX)
Texas Longhorns football (Austin, TX)
Cadillac Ranch (Amarillo, TX)
Austin Eats food tours (Austin, TX)

Wednesday, September 14

Today we were leaving Texas. Though I was happy to be leaving the heat behind, I knew that I would miss the state itself! We checked out of our hotel and went for breakfast. This was the first time that our windows fogged up because it was so hot out, and we couldn’t figure out how to get them cleared up. We sat in the parking lot of the restaurant for a few minutes trying to figure out the perfect combination of hot air and cold air to get them cleared up. Finally, after blasting the heat for a while, the windows cleared up enough for us to drive.

(Read on …)

Sunday, September 11

We stopped for breakfast and then went in search of some Austin postcards before we left town. Austin seemed to have a real lack of souvenir shops, because we had a hard time finding anything touristy. After about five attempts, we finally found a sad selection of postcards at a downtown Walgreens. We picked up a few and then got back on the road to San Antonio.

(Read on …)

Monday, September 12

We left San Antonio very early in the morning to make the drive to Houston in time to make our tour at NASA. We got to Johnson Space Center just before 11am and had some time to wander around a bit before our tour. We had signed up for the Level 9 behind the scenes tour, which is a 5-hour tour of the center. It turned out to be a really cool experience.

(Read on …)

Saturday, September 10

We thought it was going to be hard to top our day of football, BBQ and cupcakes, but we had a day of fun already lined up. Our first stop was the Austin farmer’s market to meet up with an Austin Eats food tour. Our tour wasn’t until 10am, so we wandered around the farmer’s market for a few and then met up with the group.

(Read on …)

Friday, September 9

Today was football Friday, and what better way to start the day than with the breakfast of champions–cupcakes. We hopped in the car and went to a cupcake shop near our hotel called Cupprimo. I’d found this place by chance in a Google search, and we were very happy that we found it! I can’t say enough good things about it!

(Read on …)

Thursday, September 8

We had our first real breakfast courtesy of the hotel’s breakfast buffet and then hit the road early to make the long trek south to Austin. We stopped just outside Amarillo to visit the Ozymandias, a pair of giant legs next to the interstate, also sponsored by Stanley Marsh 3. We then spent a while backtracking through farm roads in search of the tractor ranch (which we later found out was called Combine City). The GPS couldn’t find the intersection we were looking for, so we drove down a lot of country roads until we finally found it. We had been promised another Cadillac Ranch-inspired art installation, this time with tractors, but Combine City wasn’t as impressive. Plus, you couldn’t spray paint anything (legally).

(Read on …)

Wednesday, September 7

We said goodbye to Dallas and headed west towards Amarillo. One of the first towns that we stopped in was Childress. It appeared to be nothing special, but then we noticed a sign for the local high school, so on a whim I turned to head down the street. This was our first introduction to small-town love for the local high school football team. Childress is home to the Bobcats, which became very clear as we followed the giant paw prints painted on the road leading up to the school. We even managed to find homes with Bobcat signs in their front yards, though, disappointingly, nothing like what we saw in Varsity Blues!

(Read on …)

Tuesday, September 6

We woke up to take advantage of our first full day in Texas. After stopping at a bakery near our hotel for breakfast, we headed over to the Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington to catch their first tour of the day. The stadium is pretty much as ginormous as you would expect. In fact, it was so big that we couldn’t even figure out how to get in! We drove in circles around the building until we finally found a gate that was open so that we could park.

(Read on …)

Sunday September 4

Aidan and I got an early start for our two-week road trip to Texas. We started out at 7 am for our longest drive of the trip through four states. The technical difficulties started right away when the iPod wouldn’t work. Radio it would be.

(Read on …)