The Cross-Country Chronicles: Don't Mess With Texas

When Molly and I were planning our cross-country adventure, driving through the middle of Arizona and New Mexico sounded like a great idea.

But the desert is called the desert for a reason. It's deserted. There's NOTHING to look at.

The mind and butt-numbing five hour drive from Flagstaff to Albequerque, New Mexico was one of shortest drives on our trip but was by far, one of the most painful. If it weren't for the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows audio book, we might have stopped to drive cactus spines into our eyes just so we wouldn't have to look out on any more desert.

With the Arizona fires still raging and having burnt a hole the size of Chicago across the state's landscape, its next door neighbour of New Mexico was suffering the smokey after effects. The beautiful watermelon mountains which frame the New Mexico skyline couldn't be seen through the eerie yellow haze that hovered over the city and turned the sun blood red.

Instead, we stayed indoors with our Albequerque host, Carolyn - a close friend of Molly's - and her three, oh-so-adorable kittens. Vegging out on the couch watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall was a welcome refrain from the road. Especially when we had an epic 12-hour drive to Austin, Texas ahead of us.

But with Harry Potter plugged in and a brief, but memorable lunch time stop in Sudan, Texas (where, just in case of confusion, a sign states - America lives here) the drive wasn't half bad. If you can deal with the Vote Out Obama propoganda, of course. We were definitly in root-tooting, gun-shooting Texas.

After a couple of nervous days of waiting, we were able to find a last-minute couch to surf and in doing so, made two new Texan friends in our hosts, Jason and Tyler (both who weren't actually from Texas, but still qualify as Texans in my eyes).

With the boys both working during the day, Molly and I were left up to our own devices on our day off and took up a couple of Jason's local recommendations. We had breakfast tacos (and one of the best creations known to man - bacon, egg, tortilla - thank you, Mexico), swam and sunbaked at Barton Springs - a freshwater spring in the middle of Austin that has been turned into a local swimming hole and an after-swim bevvie at the Daily Juice - a local smoothie institution.

With all the Longhorn cattle wandering around Texas, there's only one thing worth eating for dinner. Meat. So, as a thankyou to our couch hosts, we took them out for what boys like best.

Barbeque.

The small suburb of Lockhart, on the skirts of Austin, is the BBQ town of Texas and definitely lived up to its reputation. We drank, we ate and we polished off every last delicious, saucy square inch of meat. Then we did what you would naturally do after eating two pounds of beef.

We went to the Lockart Elementary School carnival.

Riding The Zipper, a large ride full of twisting, turning carriages which flip upside down and inside out, probably isn't everybody's cup of tea after eating half a cow, but somehow Tyler and I made it through without losing our dinner. Although, he did lose his sunglasses as we were hanging upside down on The Kamikaze. If there was anything that made my stomach turn, it was the sight of the wirey, toothless carnies who were locking me into each death-trap.

After prying through every inch of Tyler's record collection, we threw Creedence Cleartwater Revival on the turntable, cracked open some beers and played Jungle Speed - a fast-paced, card game that involves matching shapes and colours and grabbing a totem pole. Not so great if you've had a few beers and suffer from mild dyslexia.

Molly and I were both a bit sad to leave Austin and our new friends, but with New Orleans on the horizon, we knew the bayous were beckoning.

Ciao for now. xo