Day 8

Day's Traveling
    Start: 10:00AM (Houston, TX)

    End: 12:02AM (Lubbock, TX)

Total Travel Hours

     Joanna: 26 hours 44mins

             4 hours 8mins 7 (train) 18 hours  31mins (car)4 hours 5min (plane)

     Alex: 25 hours 39mins

              4 hours 8mins (train) 17 hours 26mins (car) 4 hours 5min (plane)

States Driven through:

New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland*, Virginia and Texas (6/10)

*only 14 miles were traveled in this state 

We are officially one week into our trip! Crazy, we had been planning this forever and now we are in the heart of our trip!!

Today we woke with a gray sky (it had to happen at some point). Mike drove us to Sugar Land to pick up our car. When we go to the Hertz rent center it turned out they didn’t have the car we had reserved so we got a complimentary upgrade to a 2010 Toyota Camry! What a wonderful start to the driving portion of our trip.

The Camry is very nice when compared to Jo and my normal mode of transportation . A nice turbo boost, excellent highway gas mileage and an AUX cord for our Ipods. 

I'm a little tired from driving- so I'll finish this post tomorrow- but here are some pictures to look at! 

Our beautiful upgraded interior

Our first destination was San Antonio, TX for lunch. According to the Garmin we would arrive just before 2PM after driving 175 miles on interstate 10 (side note Interstate 10 stretches from coast to coast, we could actually just take route 10 from Mike’s doorstep in Houston to Katie’s doorstep  in LA). We pulled on to the interstate and immediately bombarded with signs for Buck-ee’s… 165 miles away. Now, Jo and I really only noticed the first few because Mike told us we needed to stop at every Buck-ee’s we saw on our trip. However, any person no matter their previous awareness of the rest stop would have noticed the billboards that appeared about every half-mile starting a 165 mils away. “Try our beaver nuggets!” “A restroom mom would approve of,” “Restroom hall of fame” and other various sayings were on the thousands of billboards we saw.  Clever…  but almost to the point that you just didn’t want to go to spite their advertising. 

Jo and I caved though, but more so because of Mike and not because of the Billboards… that’s my statement and I am sticking to it. Buck-ee’s was pretty amazing and the bathrooms are nicer than most hotels. You can buy anything from hunting gear to flavor shots for your fountain sodas. Pretty Glad we stopped.

Buck-ee's A pretty famous stop that has signs starting 173 miles before you arrive

From Buck-ee’s we continued onto San Antonio. Around 1:50 we arrived, just as the sun began to come out- perfect timing! After driving around a bit we decided to find a place to park so we could get something to eat. Now here is a sad story. San Antonio is pretty well known for its lively Riverwalk centered on a manmade river that runs through town.  Once a year the river needs to be emptied and cleaned. If you can do the math that means every person that goes to visit the Riverwalk has a 1 in 52 chance of visiting during the week they are cleaning. Jo and I could only be so lucky as to be one of those people to witness the cleaning.

we had a 1 in 52 chance of witnessing the famous draining of the Riverwalk- so luck

The Riverwalk is still very nice even without the water, but the machines cleaning the river are very loud and a lot of the restaurants take the week off and are not open.  We were able to find a restaurant The Original with delicious food and mariachi band (which came over and included Jo into the music!).

Jo tyring to fit in with the band

After eating we walked around a bit, but we were anxious to get back on the road. We didn’t want to spend too much time in the dark while driving as the speed limit drops and we would be driving through a lot of low populated areas.

On the road again, this time Jo was driving, we headed north to Fredericksburg. Our Garmin had a different plan in mind. I’m not really sure what happened but rather than going straight on interstate 20 the Garmin had us getting off and on the highway multiple times just to travel on a parallel road… it was odd. Anyway, even with the slight detours we made it to Fredericksburg. We first stopped at a hotel to go to the bathroom and pick up some information about the town. Well Jo stopped to go the bathroom, when I went in to use the facilities the women at the counter had realized we were not guests nor were we planning on being guests and kindly asked me to, “get to stepping.” But we had our pamphlets so we went further into town.

The scenes started to change as we traveled further North

Modeling the car

Fredericksburg is modeled off a German town and the German culture runs through every aspect of the town. Jo and I spent some time stretching our legs and trying to find an open bar to watch the end of the game. Sadly (or luckily as I would find out later based on the outcome of the game) we were unsuccessful in finding a place to watch the game. Soon after arriving we were on the road again, destination Lubbock, TX!  

Fredericksburg, TX

Lubbock, TX is about six hours north of Fredericksburg. It is a long drive, but means a shorter drive tomorrow into New Mexico. Other exciting things about Lubbock:

It is the home to Buddy Holly Ville (a must see for any Buddy Holly fan)

Home to the largest wind mill museum in the US

Home to a prairie dog park

Jo and I didn’t see any of these attractions, but we did see the beautiful Red Roof Inn interior. All in all it was an excellent place to stay, unless you are like Jo and like to feel clean after your shower rather than more elgk. I say she is just nit picking, haha just kidding she does have a point. Our shower didn’t work so she had to get access to another room to use a shower… but it still wasn’t that great.

Anyway, it was a great first day driving can’t wait until tomorrow!