Austin, Texas; Bitterly sweet

Alex and I arrived in Austin, TX two days ago and it was absolutely BEAUTIFUL! Sunny skies, high of 78 degrees, everything was absolutely perfect! First, we went to a really neat little coffee shop in the heart of downtown Austin. It had a really cool Sacramento coffee shop vibe to it, kind of like Temple Cafe. It was really nice outside and Alex and I decided to go to Zilker Park to have lunch. Zilker park is the prettiest park in Austin. It's huge, lots of trees, right by the river, tons of walking/running trails, has a river pool, canoeing rentals, rock climbing wall; you name it, and it's probably there. We grabbed a blanket and laid it out on the grass, and yes it was green grass! Most of the grass in Texas is yellow in the winter. It was a perfect day.

After relaxing in the sun for about two hours we went on a walk along the river. It seemed like everyone and their mom in Austin were on the walking trail by the river. It was super crowded with people exercising and taking advantage of the warm weather. While we were on our walk we saw a guy riding his bike only wearing a string thong. I wasn't fast enough to get a picture, but maybe that was a good thing. You probably don't want to see some random wrinkly old guy practically naked. I was a little surprised at first when I saw him, but then I thought to myself, "Good for him! He is enjoying this beautiful sunshiny weather while still it's here and he is enjoying it to maximum capacity! Haha!" We continued on our walk and spotted some turtles swimming in the river. We even came across four turtles sitting on a log in the river. I got a picture, but Alex wanted to get a closer shot. I began to hand over the camera to Alex and it slipped from my hands and rolled down the hill landing into the river! OH NO!!!! Did that really just happen!?!? Alex rushed down the hill to quickly grab it out from the river. Our walk quickly ended and we went to the closest Best Buy store to find out if we could save our camera from the water damage.

The last picture I took before our camera drowned

As soon as we got to Best Buy we went to the geek squad to find out our options with the camera. If you buy a camera at Best Buy you have an option of purchase a protection plan, which includes accidental water damage; well, when we bought our camera last summer we didn't purchase the protection plan. So, it would have been nice if we had of had that plan, but you know what they say, "Hindsight is 20/20." The only hope for our camera was putting it in a bag of dry rice for 1-2 days to possible draw out the moisture inside the camera. It was worth a try and it would have been an amazing story if it actually worked, but it didn't. Sadly, our camera has met it's death. We did buy a new camera, and it's waterproof :) We also purchased the protection plan, just in case something happens. You never know, right? From what I can tell, our new camera is not as good our previous one, but at least it's waterproof!

Austin is a beautiful city and there is a ton of stuff to do when it comes to entertainment. It's known as the music capital of the world. After spending time at the park, we ate some delicious Tex-Mex and went downtown to 6th street to walk around to find some good live music. We walked about 1/2 mile total and there were over 20 places with live music playing! And it was only Monday! In Austin you can find some type of entertainment going on every night of the week. We stopped at a pub that was having an open-mic night and sat and listened to music for about two hours before calling it a night. The first guy that played at the pub looked like he was in his 50s, he had long curly white hair pulled back in a ponytail, had a mustache, he was a little on the chubby side, sagged his pants like a plumber and was playing hillbilly back country songs on his guitar. It wasn't really my type of music, but this guy was incredibly entertaining! As he sang his songs about drinking, smoking and back-stabbing broken relationships, he had so much convincing emotion in his face and body language. His voice was on the raspy side and his face would turn red from singing with so much passionate and forgetting to take a breath between chorus lines. Watching him made me want to laugh from how amused I was. I didn't get a picture because we hadn't purchased our new camera yet:( But feel free to imagine what he sounded and looked like:)

That night in Austin a severe storm rolled in at about three in the morning. We were parked in a Walmart parking lot and winds were going about 40-50 miles per hour according to the weather channel app on my phone. It was raining pretty bad, too. The wind shook up the bus pretty bad throughout the night, which made sleeping practically impossible. The wind died down at about 6am and I was able to get a couple hours of sleep. The temperatures started dropping really fast. I woke up at 9am and went into Walmart to do some grocery shopping for the day. In the 30mins I was in Walmart, it dropped 10 degrees! By noon it was 28 degrees outside. It was still windy, but just not as bad. The winds have stayed pretty consistently at 10-20mph since the storm came in. With the wind chill it makes it feel about 10 degrees colder than what it actually is. So, when it's 28 it really feels like 18.

Alex and I decided to stay at a Hotel for the night, because it was supposed to get down to 18 degrees, meaning it would really feel like 8 degrees. We were only planing on staying one night , but it's still crazy cold right now, so one night has turned into two. We were able to stay at the Best Western for free for one night because Alex had Reward points from staying at the Best Western hotels previously when he was working at his old job. The Best Western we are staying at just opened 3 weeks ago and it is super nice. Everything is brand new and very modern.

Today, I woke up and tried taking a shower, but the hot water never came on. I went down to the front desk at he hotel and apparently there was a gas leak underground and it caused the gas to shut off, so consequently, there was no hot water! We waited all morning for the hot water to be turned back on. By lunchtime the hot water problem was still not fixed. So, while waiting for the hot water to be turned on I decided to go to our van to grab some of the fruit and veggies I had bought the day before. Well, they were completely FROZEN!!! I glanced over at our water jug and that was frozen solid, as well. Yeah, I wasn't about to see what it would be like to sleep in the bus with weather cold enough to freeze our water supply and food! That's why we are staying another night at the hotel. The hot water problem was eventually fixed and I was able to take a reallllllly long HOT, HOT, HOT shower:)

Alex and I haven't really venture out in the Austin area since the weather has been so bad and tomorrow we are heading to San Antonio. I feel like we got gypped. I really wanted to see more of Austin. It seems like such an amazing city. Austin will be on our list of cities worthy enough to go back a visit again someday.