Heading South for the winter... or at least for the weekend

It's been six or seven months since our last Texas weekend getaway (read here) so we headed out for another vaguely planned adventure in the back country.  Last time we headed East and ended up near Tyler, TX.  This time we decided to head south and putter around near Austin, TX.  

Our actual route was a bit crazier than that but if when I added all the destinations, GoogleMaps was covered in green balloons and you couldn't read anything.  We basically navigated around the best BBQ joints around Austin.  Here is the route we actually took once we reached Lockhart, our first BBQ destination.

We packed up all our junk, including liquids.  Since the airlines hiked fares for checked baggage I've learned to travel really light.  The beauty of roadtrips: my own blowdryer, lotion, hairspray, etc. 

I also packed Baby T (as if I had a choice)...

And we hit the road!  We took highway 281S down instead of the busy, but faster, freeway 35S.  It easily tacked on an extra 2 hours, but we got to see lots of cool things.  (This overpass was on the 35... but it was cool too)

We passed a "dumb old donkey."

I named him Harvey... a few seconds ago...

A coolio bridge:

Lots of old towns.  This really is the coolest part.  Unfortunately we passed so many cool towns that we didn't have time to stop in many of them along the way.  This town is called Hico, TX:

More of Hico:

I love the feel of a road trip like this one.  Unlike an airplane flight with the stress of being in a hurry getting to the airport, trying to fit your luggage in that tiny overhead bin, and sitting approximately 1.2 inches from a complete stranger for longer than comfortable, the best part about a road trip is the actual trip part!  We didn't feel the hurry to get anywhere fast (unless the BBQ was closing soon...) and we spent hours just talking and checking out the scenery.  Most of our trip was through what's called "Hill Country" here in Texas.  It was beautiful:

Next up: the food.  The awesome, mouth watering, fall-off-the-bone BBQ.  Nobody does BBQ like Texas..... yum!!