Sat, Mar 19 (Austin TX)
03.19.05
We woke up late this morning and Brenda was feeling fine, so we decided to head out today. We packed up and visited Mary at work on the way to pick up the pictures of Enchanted Rock (which are uploading as I am typing). We spoke with Tom a couple of times, and both Tom and Mary warned us about driving west around sunset because of the large number of deer that decide to grab their evening meal on the side of the road. After we got the pictures (and more film), we headed over to Cheryl Gallagher’s house to pick up her latest CD so we’d be able to listen to it on the trip (Harlan met Cheryl on a plane ride a few years ago). Beautiful house and view, west-southwest of Austin. Great album – Brenda loves it.
We decided to take I-35 to San Antonio and pick up I-10 west from there, just to avoid the deer. We made some calls while we could (Cingular service was sometimes unavailable for miles) and discovered that there isn’t much in the way of places we like to stay between San Antonio and Fort Stockton. In fact, the pickings can be so slim that the Comfort Inn properties routinely charge almost triple the reward points for a free stay. We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Kerrville, using the ordinary number of reward points for a free stay.
We’re planning to drive to El Paso tomorrow (about 490 miles), and we might decide to take some scenic routes along the way. As this is also the height of the season in Moab and we spent all of our “extra” days recovering in Austin, we will soon be deciding how we’re going to spend the rest of our time here (things like the wildflowers in Death Valley).