We were in Las Cruces NM until March 30 and it is now April 9 and we are in Beaumont Texas at mile post 845 (Anthony TX west of El Paso is mp 0).

The short story is Las Cruces to Fort Davis TX, a stop in Fredericksburg at Oakwood RV and on to Austin where we stayed at McKinney Falls State Park which we left this afternoon at 2 PM.  In Fort Davis our hiking was limited – non existent – as I had a sore on my foot that prevented anything more than minor hobbling around for a couple of days.  That has cleared up with treatment of Vaseline Petroleum Jelly – the old fashioned cure all for dry skin and squeaking hinges.  We puttered about and took some pleasant drives, nothing on primitive roads.  And moved on to Austin where we planned to meet Leigh and Pat again, two visits per cross country trip are better than one.  We also were in close communication with Anna Lee and Jerry Braunstein, fellow RVers who we have met up with in various places, the first time at a gathering of CHAI in Vermont (that’s Chavuarat Yehudim in case you wondered, not the tea).

We went to a music crawl on the UT campus with three live performances at different venues on the campus, LBJ Library, Visual Arts, and the H R Ransom Library.  There were three more performances at three more different venues we could not get to.  Among the performances the most intriguing to me was solo for dial phone and electronics.  We got stuck in an exhibit of Alfred Newman photography and work papers at the Ransom then after dinner at Maribeau Restaurant we went dancing at Donn’s Depot – good ole two step.  The next day started with lunch at Rubys BBQ pit which has the best brisket in Austin city limits.  Then more galleries and back to Leigh and Pat’s for dinner.  We had a call from Anna Lee and Jerry that they were settled in to a site just around the bend from us and we stopped there for cappuccino and conversation before retiring.

We agreed to an 11 K Volks March for the morning.  During the walk we added a tour of the Driskell  Hotel lobby and the entire Texas Capital Tour.  As planned we regrouped late afternoon (early evening) to drive back into town to see the Mexican Freetail bats swarm out from under the Congress Street Bridge – aka Ann Richards Bridge.  Swarm they did.  Jerry got an interesting picture of them, my photos were more black on black, no point posting them.  We moved on from there to dinner at Second, yummy on our second visit.

We said good night to Leigh and Patrick and returned to the coaches and said goodbye to Anna Lee and Jerry.  I had made a fuss about avoiding going through Houston while headed east from Austin.  This requires a 150 mile detour and it is something we have done frequently.  For some reason, having decided to move east on Tuesday to avoid a forecast storm after shopping in the morning, we found ourselves on course to pass right through Houston on 290 to 610 to 10 between 4:30 and 5:30.  It was not awful.  I would not recommend it as a steady diet.  We continued on at speeds varying between a crawl and 62 mph (our self imposed speed limit) and only lost about 20 minutes in the process.  I suspect we are just a 100 miles or so behind the Braunsteins at this point and we will overtake and pass them on their caravan some time this week.  We may stop in New Orleans, or not.  We are staying in Beaumont for at least a couple of nights to explore this area a bit and get some laundry done.