Texas is a b@%*& of a drive

After leaving Mountain View, it was a hard-charging four-day trip to Big Bend National Park. Along the way, we made stops in Bob Sandlin State Park, Austin, TX, and Ozona, TX. The former was a neat park on a lake, but we did little more than crash there for the night.

Austin was more interesting. We got there, unfortunately, right at rush hour. This was a jarring experience, after a solid week of wide open highway and rural roads. Rush hour in Austin is BAAAD! I think rivalling SoCal kind of stuff for density, it's just not as widespread or long-lived. Anyway, after finding a motel and getting some dinner and clean clothes, we headed downtown to sightsee and enjoy the nightlife. I did not notice much of the famed "wierdness" of Austin, but it seems a pretty cool city. An impressive looking capital building, nice skyline, and creative bar scene all mix together in a clean and vibant feeling few blocks. All the bars have a theme, like the surfing bar (The Wave), or the pirate bar, and "The Aquarium", and so on and so forth. Plus lots of live music. After some delicious desserts, is was time to get ready for the next day, which would turn out to be a long one...

Before heading out of town, we wanted to stop at the Cabela's. I needed stove fuel, and Heather was curious. Now, this is one crazy store. They have a two story artifical mountain in the middle with trophy deer, goats, bear, etc.. One the sides, there are "museums" of other exotic animals (zebra, antelope, etc.). A talking deer head upstairs goads people into the laser shooting range, where Heather more than doubled my score, I admit with a red face (I think I had a crooked sight!). All this, and no large canisters of stove fuel! So I walked out after an hour with a good deal on a folding camp chair and a 4 oz canister of fuel - good enough.

We drove uneventfully to Sonora. By this time, I'm getting really hot - no A/C in my truck, so in the midday sun it climbs up to 100+ degrees in there. Just outside town are the Caverns of Sonora. That is a spectacular cave, so I'm going to make that the subject of a separate blog entry. After a tour through the cave, we made dinner and recuperated a little before saddling up to try to make it to Marathon, TX before the end of the day (at this point it is around 5:30) We only made it as far as Ozona, as Heather's car started acting up. A disconcertingly loud clicking/rattle was coming from her car, and she had lost a lot of power. So we limped into Ozona and another motel for the night. The next morning, of course, her car is working well again! We did talk a local mechanic into having a look, but he could not tell anything was wrong. Okay then, on to Ft. Stockton, TX! So, long story short, we wind up getting oil changes after 4 stops looking for a mechanic to diagnose what turned out to be a low-oil level! I had looked at the stick the night before, but it looked full, though very dark. I forgot that if the engine is running, the oil level always looks full. Arrg.

But it all worked out, and that afternoon of April 17, we finally! drove into Big Bend National Park...