Making the Rounds and Crashing

We left our AirBnb so early in the morning that much of Madrid had not gone to sleep yet.  It was dark out and the night clubs were winding down. Over 24 hours of travel and we were back in New York.

What a great experience this trip has been.  We saw so much, had plenty of time to leave the tourist mode and get into everyday life.  I know we each took different things away from this experience, but I think at the end we were all happy to get back to our "norm" in the U.S.

Since leaving Madrid we have been in NJ getting our camper and storage stuff organized,

The girls are back together :)

Marathon, Texas and More Big Bend

We just left Marathon, TX and while I already posted a little bit about the park I didn't mention Marathon much. This was a very, very small (population 420) town and had it's own little charm.  Ironically, there is a hotel, The Gage Hotel, in the middle of the 2-4 block downtown area that is quite fancy and has a long history in this town.  The hotel has a restaurant with a pricey menu and apparently enough of a clientele to keep it going.  Across the railroad tracks are the Gage Gardens, which are maintained by the hotel and are quite lush and beautiful especially when everything is so parch in the desert.

Big Bend National Park

Today the girls and I went to Big Bend National Park. We are staying in Mararthon, TX so we had about a 45 minute drive to the park entrance. It is such a big park there is a lot of driving involved.

Dallas with Toño and Neelima

After leaving Austin we headed north to visit Toño and Neelima in Dallas.  Yeehaw!  It had been at least 3 or 4 years since we had seen each other and we finally got to meet Arjun :)  Such a cutie!

The girls had a great time carrying him around all over the place.

Artsy Austin

Austin was a fun city!  We arrived on a Sunday and stayed for a week.  We stayed at McKinney State Park just outside of the city and once we arrived we set up camp and then took off to explore.  We had our bike rack clips on hold at REI and wanted to get a feel for the city before our work week started. It was rainy that night though, so mostly we just did some errands and spent a good few hours in a book store called Book People.  It's always great when we find a good bookstore because we leave with a new list of things to check out at the library on their nooks.  It is so cool that they can check out books through their nook just like they were at home.  Thank you Jordan!!

Stephen Austin State Park

We left New Orleans on a Friday afternoon and headed out not really know where we would stay that night.  Our only point of reference was that we had a reservation in Austin, TX on Sunday.  We drove for a bit and reached Baton Rouge.  Stopped for a Trader Joe's fill up and made some dinner in the RV before heading back out.  

We made a plan to reach the Texas Welcome Center rest area.  This would be our first rest stop sleep over and went pretty well.  There were several other RV types there and of course truckers.  

We slipped in beside another RV and slept like babies.