YA'LL

 Hey Ya'll, So I've been in Austin for the last week and a bit. Will probably stay here for next weekend and make my way to New Mexico / Arizona.  

The trip from New Orleans to Texas was around 10 hours. I stopped at a typical diner for lunch at one point. 

I caught up with Liz, who I met at Surval and who lives in Austin.  She took me to Salt Lick, which is a world renowned BBQ just 30 minutes out of Austin. For $20 you could have all you could eat. I can't really even describe how good the food was, I didn't even eat dinner later as I was still full. 

We went to an Oscars party, just had bingo - I actually won buy answering a trivia question. I received a goody bag filled with shirt, glasses, bottle opener etc.    

The Cathedral of Junk is around 20 minute bus ride out of downtown Austin,  it's just in this guy's backyard. He's been collecting this 'junk' for 25 years +. It's part of "Keep Austin Weird" - which is actually the same slogan as Portland. If you've ever seen the movie Harriet the Spy, which was probably my favourite movie as a kid -  it was very similar to the garden junk scene in that, but not as great. (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccX1d19hmc8)  

Austin has a Hope Outdoor Gallery - which is pretty much just this old concrete structure that people go and graffiti it. It's constantly changing, so If I went back later on, the artwork wouldn't be the same. 

                            

While in Dallas, I went to Trammel Crow Park, which is supposed to have a nice view of the city skyline, unfortunately it was a really hazy so I couldn't really see anything, however there were some concrete cows for some reason. 

Later that night we went to a Rodeo show at the Stockyards in Fort-worth. I've never seen so many cowboys in one area. At one point a whole group of kids came out and was chasing a calf around the arena. Later on they came back to chase a sheep. There was bull riding - which was a little more intense than the horses. One horse did an actual flip at one point, I'm amazed it didn't break anything. 

Thanks for all the birthday calls/messages. 

Sarah xx