Swamping around

We used Lafayette as a base to go on a couple of day trips. First stop was for a swamp tour, Lake Martin looked truly impressive, almost mirror like at times:

Plenty of bigger gators:

Then the next day, after brekkie in our favourite, Waffle House, we headed over to Opelousas where we looked round an eerie museum with automated toys and a mocked up Vieux Village.

We spent the next night in Breaux Bridge, in themed cabins and went out for awesome crawfish in local place, Crazy Bout Crawfish.

Nawlins y'all

Sara joined us out in New Orleans for a week. Our first night in the city was also our first night doing Airbnb in USA. It wasn't the most successful, with us spending most of the night catching roaches the size of the ones we saw in China! Nice!

We looked round the French Quarter and went up and down St Charles st on the tram:

We visited the Mardi Gras museum which had some impressive models:

Then we headed back across to Lafayette, where Livvy gave us another first:

Rain, rain go away

After the big three of San Antonio, Austin and Houston, we moved into Louisiana (state 6). We stayed in a casino car park just over the border! We had to have a bet on the slot machines each time we went to the toilet!

Then the heavens opened over night. The next day felt really fresh, but it was super dark and the rain continued as we carried on driving. It was difficult to drive in such heavy rain and we could see the exits off the freeways getting flooded and cars being abandoned, so we stopped up for the night in Lake Charles. We did stop on the way in Sulphur in a real local place for a gumbo-ey pork with yams and sweet beans, very Louisianan.

We chilled in a suite apartment over night, we even turned the telly on for the first time to watch the weather channel!

Thankfully the weather had improved by the next day, so we had a look at the 'gators in Cameron Prairie Refuge:

We enjoyed the drive towards New Orleans, looking at all the flooding:

We stayed in Lafayette KOA campground, playing retro games in their games room and crazy golf.

We had a super nice brekkie in French Press in downtown Lafayette, celebrating Selina's birthday. We had proper gumbo and granola. Then it was on to Nawlins to meet Sara.........

Weird Austin, Houston we've had a problem

We met up with Sara's friend, Ash and her husband Stefan for lunch in the oldest hotel in Austin. Later, we walked round near Capitol building, enjoying the live music:

Next stop was camping in Houston. We visited the Space Centre, an impressive place. We were able to see the Mission Control as it was back in the 60s:

Saturn V was super impressive:

Livvy was even able to touch the moon:

Olive in front of the Olive capsule:

New low!

It was getting late on the way to Lockhart, so we ended up car camping in Walmart car park! [We did check with them before staying!]

Here we are sleeping in the back of our minivan. It's quite roomy for two, but a bit tight for the three of us!

The next day we had the best food so far, in a really cool place called Smittys in Lockhart. The BBQ meat was AMAZING! It didn't look at all appealing from the outside! 

But there was a constant flow of customers, you buy your BBQ meat by the pound and use brown paper as plates. 

We then carried on to McKinney's State Park near Austin. We went into town in the evening to see the 1.5 million bats leaving the big bridge where they live right in downtown.

Fiesta like there's no mañana!

We stopped in Del Rio to break the journey up and had delicious breakfast tacos sat at the counter in an authentic American diner.

Then on to fiesta time in San Antonio. We arrived, checked in, then immediately went into downtown to enjoy festivities, lots of live Mexican music and tasty local food. 

The next day we enjoyed a guided tour round the riverwalk. 

We went to learn about the famous Alamo. 

On the way out of San Antonio, we hit Pearl Brewery district with ace shops and tasty French cuisine in the brewery.

We also stopped in Gruene to see the oldest dance hall in Texas, we haven't managed to go to a honky-tonk yet!

Howdy y'all!

After T or C, we did a really long day of driving through West Texas to a small arty town called Marfa. We saw a mock Prada shop on the way, in the middle of nowhere!

We really liked Marfa, there were lots of galleries, people were really friendly and welcoming and the food we had was great. We went to a star party at McDonald observatory, the host gave us a tour of the constellations using a massive laser and we used telescopes to look at stars, including Orion's Belt and Jupiter with its rings. 

We drove through Big Bend National Park via Route 170 (top 10 drives in USA) which was scenic, but the river going through the middle of the park is the border with Mexico, so we weren't quite sure how Trump's wall would work!

Olive was practising her sitting-up skills in big bend in front of Balancing Rocks 

We had our first Texan BBQ in big bend and found these amusing stools in a ghost town, Telingua, near the park.