The Lombard's Great Adventure: Austin Part One

One of our favorite stops so far has definitely been Austin, Texas! We spent a total of five nights there: two in a Motel 6, which is cheap and dog friendly, and three at McKinney Falls State Park, which is about a fifteen minute drive to town. We got into Austin around 10 p.m. on a Friday after leaving New Orleans and went straight to our hotel. We had spent around eight hours on the road and were both exhausted. We had only planned to stay at the Motel 6 the first night since we got in so late, but after arriving at McKinney Falls on Saturday we realized our reservation didn't begin until Sunday (and of course they were all full). I (Alexa) had made the camp reservations while we were in New Orleans before realizing it was Mardi Gras weekend and hotel rates skyrocketed on Friday, and completely forgot that we were a day off schedule. Whoops!

We were both really surprised at how drivable Austin was, everywhere we were trying to go to was within about fifteen minutes from either the hotel or campsite. The weather was pretty perfect for camping, 75 degrees and sunny during the day and lows in the mid 30's at night. We have a queen size cot and sleeping bag, and the bag is rated down to zero so we were plenty warm at night.

Monday morning we made some coffee and oatmeal and headed down to the lower falls of McKinney falls and took a hike with the dogs. The trail down to the falls is only about a half mile long, if that, and is pretty easy terrain, which is perfect for our daniff Sasha who has some hip and knee problems. Sasha loves to be in the water so she had an awesome time walking down by the falls and river, and spent most of her time up to her knees in the water. McKinney park is also home to an old rock shelter that has been used by Native Americans for centuries during storms and bad weather, and is perched right above the river a little up from the lower falls.

Since we spent most of our time in Austin eating we decided to do a separate post dedicated to all of the food we ate and the art we saw and we should have it up by the end of the weekend!

Pav and Sasha waiting for us to unload our camping gear at McKinney Falls

Pav and mom next to the campfire

Sasha and Pav relaxing in the sunshine

Probably waiting to be fed...

Sasha is sure that she's a lap dog

Ben snapping pics and making sure Sasha doesn't dive into the water

Lower falls was pretty dry but you can see it in the background

Pavlov at the old Native American rock shelter

Enjoying the view

Pavlov napping on dad

We put our clothes into plastic 3 drawer sets because since we're seeing most states in the U.S. and will encounter so many different climates, we needed to be able to get to things easily. Ahhhhh, organization!