Off to the big city in the Airstream. I’m more of the wilderness type and Grace is definitely more the city girl so we try to mix it up with our travel locations. However, Austin is definitely a location we can both agree on.
The curse of the urban RV visit is that locations to stay in tend to be both over priced and over crowded. Thankfully, Austin provides a welcome alternative in McKinney Falls State Park. Just a few miles from downtown Austin, this amazingly expansive state park offers beautiful and enormous spots with lots of trails and incredible quantities of wildlife for essentially being in an urban setting. With the exception of the inevitible college kid party on the weekend (this is hook’em horn country after all) this place was a wonderful quiet home base for exploring the city. It also gave us a chance to have our first campfire since we’ve been on the road. Can’t believe it took us this long!
We aren’t the perfect demographic for a city like Austin. We tend to go to bed too early for things to heat up on 6th Street. However, that doesn’t stop us from enjoying many of the other charms of the city, including the food. While Austin is full of many excellent brick and mortar restaurants, it’s especially famous for it’s food trucks. We were big fans of The Lucky Belly at The Thicket and The Mighty Cone at The Picnic.
We also had an informative morning at The Bullock Texas State History Museum exploring both the glorious and darker parts of the history of the Lone Star State. We even found a few exhibits that reference relatives of Grace! Does that make us honorary Texans?
Sometimes cities can be a bit tough for nomadic dog owners. Austin on the other hand is a dog owner’s paradise. The city is full of massive dog parks to let your pup run free. Our favorite was the Onion Creek District Park. This massive greenbelt features miles of creekside trails plus huge fields for your dog to run and play.
While we spent most of our two weeks in the city proper, we did make one day trip out to Saledo, just to the north of Austin where our Aunt Melissa and Uncle Joe run the amazing Glass River Design glass studio. They make some absolutely stunning glass work and they love to teach people about their craft as well!
While we didn’t make it out to the bars on 6th Street, we did at least get a little music entertainment. On the night before we were leaving town, we made to the Austin Opera for a fun performance of Donizetti’s “The Daughter of the Regiment”. It was a great send off from the big city.
