Tour de Texas

Last weekend I had my own little 'Tour de Texas' trip which was quite fantastic.  It went a little something like this: Dallas --> College Station --> San Antonio --> San Marcos --> Austin --> Dallas.  Phew! Five cities in four days with amazing friends and hilarious memories: AWESOME.

Thursday after work, Taylor, Alan, and I headed down to College Station.  After our arrival in our beloved alma mater town, we headed to Northgate.  Duh.  Where else can you cash in on $1.50 pints and $2.00 drop shots?!  

We made the rounds to all of our favorite spots: Sake Bar, Dry Bean, The Lounge (which has washers, now!!), Hatters, and finally ending at Cedar Lane, of course.

Taylor and me at Cedar Lane.

I'm obviously outside of the inside joke on this one being as how 

I don't get why they're making these faces.  Or why they found it 

hilarious at the time.  But it does make for a funny picture nonetheless.

I finally got to play the giant JENGA game!! I lost.

After Northgate, we headed back to Stephen's house, played a game (or four) of Pong (college-ish, much?!), and finally headed to bed (six hours passed my usual bedtime - sheesh!).  Friday I spent all day running errands in College Station.  Carrie and I went to lunch at Newks with our former Fish Camp advisor, Jomita, I became a member of the Association's Century Club (look out for my fancy car decal and sophisticated plaque coming soon!), and went to see a movie ($4.00 - what up college town prices!) with Taylor.  

That evening we loaded up the vehicles and hit the road for San Antonio.  We, of course, stopped at Fuego on our way out of town, though!  After arriving at Stephen's parents' house in SA, we spent the evening playing Catch Phrase, Bowl of Nouns, and organizing a massage train (ok the last one was just the girls).  It pretty much felt like a Fish Camp roadtrip - except with booze :)

The next morning we awoke bright and early to Bruce making us custom pancakes - yum!  We quickly headed out the door and were soon en route to San Marcos.  After spending entirely too much time in Walmart gathering supplies, we finally headed out to the cars to pack everything up.  We did, however, face one tiny hiccup in our plans - we had a leaky cooler.  After many attempts to block and stop the out-pour of water (the cooler lacked a plug), Carrie came up with the idea of using chewing gum.  So there we all were, frantically chewing gum and handing it over to Stephen to create the plug we needed.  Gross.  See picture below: 

Once the cooler problem was solved, we were finally headed to Don's Fish Camp (aka the best tubing place ever).  The line was longer than I had ever seen it but thanks to Matt who was ahead of us and pre-purchased all of our tubes, we were in the bus line in no time!  Here's a picture of 1/3 of our group:

There were 18 of us floating so it was the. best. float. ever.  Complete with frequent stops at all the islands and quite a variety and plentitude of yummy drinks, we were all very happy by the end of our float.  Once we returned our tubes and waited for the stragglers of the group to arrive, we faced a slight panic when we thought we had lost the container with all our licenses and keys and credit cards.  Crisis averted, however, and soon we were on our way to celebrate the day at Los Cucos!!  See picture below:

Just Ghinells, me, and Bri, and the typical photo-bombers, Heintschel 

and Stephen, after stuffing our faces at Los Cucos.  Love you, ladies!!

After our scrumptious Mexican meal, half of our group headed back to the Station or SA, and half of us traveled on to Austin for the night.  We checked into our hotel, showered, and headed to 6th Street.  Upon finding the boys (they had forgone showers in hopes of gaining an extra hour at the bars - gross, I know), we found ourselves dancing the night away at The Blind Pig:   

We soon moved next door to Maggie Mae's (my favorite Austin bar so far) but didn't stay there long as we were so tired from the weekend.  One cup of water down and I was ready to go sleep!  We did manage to wrangle a stranger into taking a picture of ::what was left of:: our group before we left, though.  Although looking at the slanted and off-center technique this guy used, I'm not sure I should have entrusted him with my camera:

Upon arriving at the hotel, we asked forced the boys to take showers and then rearranged the room to fit our blow-up mattresses.  Being that we're all extremely frugal people and the hotel room was very expensive, we expertly squeezed 8 of us into our little space.  Everyone actually got a bed although Carrie and Chelbi slept at a slanted angle the whole night...sucks to come home last!

The next morning we loaded the cars and divided into the College Station and Dallas-bound groups and set out to enjoy a delicious meal at Kerbey Lane before heading our separate ways.  After an awesome appetizer of queso and guac, I ordered this:

That, folks, is the Eggs Francisco.  It's a halved english muffin topped with scrambled eggs, avocados, bacon, and queso.  Basically, a little bit of heaven in your mouth.  I also substituted my two sides for a short stack of pancakes which were to-die for!  Kerbey Lane is always a favorite and a must-eat if you're in Austin.

After finishing lunch and saying our goodbyes, my group headed back to Dallas.  We stopped at the Czech Stop on the way and I treated myself to two kolaches and the (aforementioned in previous post) sprinkled cupcake.  De-li-cious.  

After such a great weekend full of traveling Texas, delicious food, floating the river, and spending time with 15ish of my best friends, we made it home just in time to watch the Mavs beat the Heat to become the NBA Champions.  What a great weekend :)