Texas!

Wednesday 11/8:
Karen Thompson flew into El Paso just as Jaclin flew out. Karen is a friend of mine from Asheville and she gets to join me as well as visit one of her best friends from college who works in Big Bend! So, Karen and I set out for Big Bend and a good road trip.

We drove through incredibly beautiful land of Texas, through tiny towns. Marfa was a town I had been hearing about for years...the art installation Prada store and a haven for artists. It was a really cool town, but definitely too cool for me to live in. A very interesting place to visit! Karen and I stopped for a delicious lunch from a busted down truck called Food Shark. Yum!

We arrived in Big Bend and met Laura and her husband, Erik in the park. As I drove into the park, I was SO surprised by the huge mountains of Big Bend. It looks JUST like the landscape in Jurassic Park and happens to have some incredible dinosaur fossils that keep popping up! Laura and Erik work on the trail crew in the park, so they're super cool and know all of the secret cool spots of the park. We definitely got a local insider look into how to do Big Bend like the locals. Karen has already been to Big Bend twice before, so she definitely knew her way around it!

Laura and Erik made dinner for us, we had some good cocktails and settled into a nice night's sleep.

Thursday 11/9:
We all woke up, Erik made the best coffee and Laura warmed up some egg muffins. We knew we had to pack up our backpacks but Laura had already had someone pack up a lot of items for us on mules and brought it up the trail we would hike up. Isn't that awesome?? I wish I had a mule to bring my gear everywhere!

We hopped on the road and headed towards the Pinnacles trail. Big Bend has huge desert mountains and BEAUTIFUL desert plants everywhere. The best cacti I have seen on the whole trip. Lots of different colors and layers of plants. I can only imagine in the spring during the desert blooms! As we drove through the park, we went up and down, through these big mountains and passes. I LOVED the landscape of this park, I feel like there are no words to really describe the feeling of the different kinds of layers to the desert.

Karen had prepared me for the difficulty of the trail, so we hiked uphill for a looonnnngggg time to get to the top of these pinnacles of the mountains by Emory Peak. It was TOUGH but felt so good to hike to the top with a pack. It was also really cool because Erik and Laura built these trails! They pointed out parts that they engineered and places where they struggled and how they fixed the trail. It was a cool perspective of hiking, I had not thought about the trail crews in these parks.

Once we got to the top of the Pinnacles, we headed down the Boot Canyon trail to the Boot Cabin. The Boot Cabin is a verrrrry rustic cabin in the middle of the canyon that the members of the trail crew have access to. The mule had dropped off some of our stuff up there already, so we arrived to some cold beer and a well stocked cabin! Rangers have been coming out to the boot cabin since the early 70s and there are logs going back to those dates, which was cool to read through.

We took a little walk through the canyon to see the fall colors, checked out our surroundings, and settled into the cabin for dinner. The Boot Cabin is surrounded by wilderness, it was one of the darkest places I have ever been at night. Which scared me QUITE a bit with stories of mountain lions, bears, and rattlesnakes. I didn't see any of them, though, so that's good! But I would always like to see some animals from a far....

We played Settlers of Catan, ate Mac n Cheese, laughed a lot and slept under the enormous sky of stars in Big Bend.

Friday 11/10:
We woke up at the Boot Cabin, Karen and I definitely slept it. Laura and Erik were a well-oiled machine, coffee ready and clean up was already beginning! We were embarking on what Laura likes to call, "Turn n' Burn". That means, we had to hike down from Boot Canyon, eat lunch in the lodge, head home for showers and re-packing, then hitting the road to Terlingua.

We had a very quick hike down the mountain, SO MUCH faster than hiking up! We also made a very successful "Turn n' Burn", repacked for another campout in Terlingua and hopped in the car. Terlingua is a sort-of off the grid town to the West of Big Bend. It is in the middle of the desert and people build little shacks and houses amongst the ghost town ruins. It's a REALLY cool place, but definitely a lifestyle. Nothing is very functional, restaurants took forever, but I can see how people live out here. It's very interesting to see.

Erik and Laura had invited friends out to their property in Terlingua for a bonfire and lots of bocce ball. Their property is amazing. They have a garage and an Airstream with a beautiful deck. Did I mention their dogs? Wyatt is a greyhound and Fiona is a Saluki, so they're super funny to see out there in the desert. They're beautiful, like graceful deer! Anyway, we had a rough dinner at La Kiva, which was supposed to be an iconic place to go! It wasn't that great..and we had terrible

service. But we had fun anyway.

Their friends showed up and we played bocce ball in the desert and in an old desert dump. Lots of old cars and random stuff that they keep uncovering in the back of their property. It's really cool. We had another good camp out that night and saw the most amazing stars.

Saturday 11/11:
We headed into town for breakfast at Posada, but it was also tough to get! They had forgotten to charge their iPad which they use for orders, so they decided they couldn't take orders for 30 minutes or so. Haha. Finally, we got to order and it was delicious!

We walked around the ghost town of Terlingua for a while and saw some art galleries and a really cool rock shop. The ruins amongst the stores and shops is SO cool. Terlingua was an old mining town (uranium!) but busted a long time ago and a bunch of hippies and random people showed up and started a community of odd people. Haha.

After Terlingua, we had another "Turn n' Burn" to unpack our stuff and head out before sunset to the Hoodoos. This was not a trail, but we got to climb up these huge rock structures to see the sunset. It was BEAUTIFUL. After the sunset, we walked back to the car and went to see an exhibit of the fossils that have been found in Big Bend. I was

amazed by the amount of HUGE dinosaurs that come out of there, Tyrannasaurus Rex! It was a really cool exhibit and a little spooky because we had to use our headlamps to see the fossils.

Finally, we arrived back to Laura and Erik's house in Panther Junction and had a fantastic evening together. Laura and Erik are absolutely wonderful, very fun and interesting, while also being incredible hosts. I loved my time with them.

Sunday 11/12:

Karen and I set sail for Midland, Texas today as she was flying out this afternoon. It was a very flat drive, but made interesting by the extreme fog and chill that started. We stopped at a very authentic Mexican food lunch in Odessa and I dropped her off at the airport just in time!

I am currently at a hotel just outside of the airport and am planning the last of my days of my trip. I am SO excited to see Crista and Tish in Austin tomorrow. It's so crazy to me that I'll be home in a few days. I am SO excited to be home, I love Asheville and my boys at home. But I am definitely not excited about getting back to real life. I have a month of job searching allotted, so that's what I'll be doing once I get back. I am going to work really hard to keep the blues at bay and just try to enjoy some time off at home.

Monday 11/13:
After a quick coffee in Midland, I headed towards Austin by way of some oil country roads! I spent the afternoon thrift shopping in Fredericksburg, which is one of the cutest places I have seen in Texas. It's a cute little town with little shops and restaurants with a weird twinge of German. I'm not sure what the history is of the town, but there are a lot of German restaurants and decorations. It's cute!

I pulled into Austin and was SO excited to see Crista and Tish! Tish had to work quite a bit this week but it was wonderful to spend lots of time with Crista. We caught up, walked Dipsea, and ate delicious Thai food.

Tuesday 11/14:
I sat in C and T's amazing house and did my homework all morning. I drank lots of coffee and read the newspaper with Dipsea. Then I headed towards UT Austin to the LBJ Presidential Library. It was a really incredible history lesson, he really had an interesting career. It's a very entertaining look into his life and the events going on around the time. I highly recommend this to Austin tourists, I know it sounds a little weird. But I promise it's good!

After the LBJ library, Crista and I had a glass of wine and then met Tish for an AMAZING sushi dinner. This was some REAL sushi! It was the best! I just love spending time with them. I can't say it enough, having two families that I love is just the best.

Wednesday 11/15:
Today, I went to South Congress and poked around the stores and looked for some Christmas presents. I ate lunch at Guero's and enjoyed a lot of very interesting Austin people watching. Later, Crista and I met at her office where I saw where she works and met some folks she works with. She even got to skip out on an afternoon meeting and we took Dipsea on a walk through the scuptural gardens and saw peacocks!

After our nice afternoon walk, we had margaritas and hung out while Tish was at work til late. Then we all met up back at home to watch an episode of Stranger Things 2!

Thursday 11/16:
C and T woke up early with me and made me an incredible breakfast and delicious coffee for my roadtrip to Memphis. 10 hours of driving. It was the longest stretch I had done on the trip and kind of the worst. Lots of trucks and huge stretches of the same highway. But I wanted to get home to have some time in Asheville before Thanksgiving. So, I stayed in a hotel in Memphis and enjoyed a nice evening of Harry Potter and an early bedtime.

Friday 11/17:
I made it home! A long, boring drive today but am so glad to be back. I am so glad to get out of the car but I'm sure next week I'll be ready to hit the road again. I am excited to start a little fresh here at home, find a new job, and a new routine. I am so happy to be back with Jamie and Huck on Hunt Hill Place. It has been the best trip ever and I am so unbelievably happy I took the risks to do it.