Here are a few parting shots of Austin.
Graffiti down on South Congress
Our last twilight stroll along town lake
The 1800 mile drive home was split into three days. The first day we drove from Austin Tx, to Las Cruces, New Mexico. The drive through West Texas and New Mexico were rather nice. Very few cars on the road and relatively nice scenery--vibrantly colored desert mountains, some vegetation, beautiful clouds in the sky. It was a 9-hour drive and we basically split it down the middle, Nikki taking first shift, I took second. We drove her cream convertible VW bug that we had stuffed to the gils with all of our stuff. On that first day toward the end when we were delirious with exhaustion and being cooped up, worrying about Deep
Vein Thrombosis from the lack of circulation we drove through a massive thunderstorm in El Paso. It was scary because the sky got so dark, the freeway so swamped I could hardly see a thing. But we got through it safely. We had a delicious dinner at some inexpensive italian restaurant. Nikki and I scarfed down an appetizer, dinner, and desert and in 45 minutes we were in and out of the restaurant. The second day was the worst. We were heading from Las Cruces all the way to Newport Beach, California...an 11 hour drive. We left at 7:30 and I took the first shift. It was a fine drive until Arizona. Within 10 minutes of crossing the boarder we had seen 4
cop cars. Two had pulled people over giving them tickets and the other two were hiding in the bushes in the median ready to catch their next victim. It was an annoying tango game between switching between the slow lane filled with trucks put putting along at 65mph and the fast lane filled with speed demons going 95mph. We were lucky and did not hit any substantial traffic in the LA area and made it to Newport by about 6pm. The heat through AZ and CA deserts was impressive. It got up to 121.
I took a picture of the temperature here at 4pm, 120 degrees. Nikki stayed with Ian and I stayed with my grandparents in Huntington. We took one day of break and enjoyed the beach and fresh air before we headed all the way back to the bay area. It is nice to be home (but way too cold!)
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