We continued our exploration of CA by getting on our first “legit” hike in the area, Bishop’s Peak.
This is a super steep climb of about 950 feet in elevation over 3.5 miles.
It was cool to see so many people out and active whether it was hiking or rock climbing. We can see how the views make it hard to sit in the house though.
Doesn’t hurt that it’s 70 degrees and sunny in February either.
At the top we took a few minutes to lounge and take in the beauty. We could even see a glimpse of the coast over the hills in the distance. Amazing!
After we finished our hike, we figured it would make sense to do some wine tastings. It’s kind of hard not to when you have to pass by hundreds of them everywhere you go.
The next day’s weather proved to be perfect, again, so… lets just take an incredible 40 minute drive to the beach.
Now it just so happens, a stretch of beach near us is a dog beach. Needless to say Chica was pumped.
This whole idea of us sitting out there, in the middle of February, on what could be considered an exotic beach is pretty sweet.
Everybody enjoyed and had a great time.
And of course on the way home, we passed countless wineries and decided to sample more of the local grapes.
Insane…it’s literally the only word that comes to mind after sitting for minutes trying to figure out how to start this post.
We’ve had quite a few memorable experiences since the beginning of this journey and this one, well, was insane.
We kicked it off with Sean & Pat arriving in Paso and taking a drive along Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) up to Hearst Castle.
Let me just say, William Randolph Hearst was a baller! This place is official; the outside and inside décor is a mix of super exclusive stuff from all over the world.
At one point William had acquired 250,000+ acres of this amazing real estate.
While the tour itself was pretty weak, just walking around on our own and enjoying the scenery was fantastic.
Wish we woke up to this view every day!
And basically, right across the street, were a whole lot of Elephant Seals – no way we don’t check that out on the way home.
The next day we sampled the winery scene that Paso has to offer starting with lunch and a tasting at Cass Winery.
Fantastic food and wine! We’ll be back, Cass.
With full bellies and a buzz we hit up Sculpterra which came highly recommended; it didn’t disappoint.
The folks providing the tasting took our craziness in stride and actually seemed to be amused, or at least did a good job of pretending to enjoy our presence.
Can’t say that the band outside thought too highly of us though. They probably figured they’d be playing in front of a low key audience on Super Bowl Sunday…
Yeah…no.
Mammoth
The ride to Mammoth is about a 7 hour trip, but it didn’t matter; the drive was gorgeous with incredibly diverse scenery.
After passing through lush green hills, somehow the terrain turned to desert in an instant and we were headed toward Mammoth on the Eastern Sierra Scenic Byway.
This stretch of 395 is so gorgeous, Sean risked life and limb to get theeee perfect picture.
Even more impressive was our 50 mile detour off 395.
The National Park is HUGE and we barely scratched the surface; nonetheless, stopping off to see Rainbow Canyon was so worth it.
After an early night following a long drive, we woke up ready to take care of business; as you can see, we completely crushed those bunny slopes.
Pat and Sean on the other hand were a bit more adventurous.
Who’s that third guy in the picture? Oh, just Tom who happened to be at Mammoth…what a random/awesome surprise.
Couldn’t be more grateful to our friends for such an awesome trip.
After a week at Mammoth, Sean parted ways and took a flight to SoCal while Amy, Pat and I doubled back to Paso. The three of us spent the rest of the weekend as it started: eating, drinking and scoping out the scene.
We sampled the local breweries, BarrelHouse & Firestone which are 10 minutes from our spot in Paso – amazing.
This place is getting better and better!
Wrapping up the trip, we decided to ride Pat by Morro Bay on the way to the airport.
Not sure if it was nice or cruel of us to stop at the coast knowing Pat was on the way back to below freezing temperatures in Philly…
While preparing to leave Austin was a bit of a bummer we were super pumped about the fun ride out west that we had planned.
The excitement of an adventure certainly helps when you get that unavoidable twang of anxiety that comes with picking up and leaving a place you just got acclimated to.
We headed Northwest out of Austin on a Thursday afternoon toward Ft. Stockton, TX which would be our first overnight stop.
Ft. Stockton put us a few hours from WSNM (New Mexico) which was our first planed detour on our ride out.
As soon as we arrived we knew that the 110 mile round trip detour off of I-10 was worth it – as you can see from above.
After scoping out the scene for a minute at the visitor center, we decided to rent a cheap sled so that we could slide down the dunes while exploring this amazing place.
Me and Chica getting ready to go down the hill.
This park is unbelievable. On the approach to the Monument, you would never guess there would be snow white sand dunes situated in the middle of nowhere. The whole surrounding scenery was intense.
Every time one of us would slide down the hill, Chica would come barreling down as well. Needless to say, she had a blast and was well exercised for the second leg of our drive.
We had already driven about five hours on our way to White Sands and goal was to drive another 440 miles to Phoenix that same day to stay on schedule for our visit with Dory in Orange County.
So 440 miles to Phoenix equated to about another 9 hours on the road. A 14 hour driving day with a stop at White Sands was a lot, but it just doesn’t seem as bad when driving through the endless Southwestern beauty of New Mexico and Arizona.
Our drive from Phoenix to SoCal was beautiful! After crossing into CA we stopped off randomly for gas and wound up at the museum.
In another random on that stop, we ran into a veteran from PA and he schooled us a bit. The gentleman informed us that Patton’s troops would simulate desert warfare in this particular locale while training for battle in North Africa during WWII – hence the location of the memorial.
So glad we got to pay tribute!
SoCal:
We arrived at Dory’s mid-day Saturday; it was so good to see him! Stuffing our faces with amazing food was on the agenda; Dory and Katie didn’t disappoint!
One of the nicest surprises, for me at least, was the Boba (Taiwanese bubble tea) at Class 302. Never really got into it before, but this place was bomb.
And we had one unexpected, but not surprising event happen: Amy shaved the back of her head!
One day into being a Californian and Amy goes grunge! This was inspired by Katie, who had this bad ass design of her own and Amy wanted it…personally, I kind of like it 🙂
While the weather was uncharacteristically rainy during our stay in SoCal, we had an amazing time with Dory and Katie. Looking forward to the next visit!
Drive to Paso Robles:
We left SoCal early Monday morning and got a taste of the terrible traffic these poor people deal with on a daily basis. Once we past Santa Monica on the 1, the traffic opened up and we were on our way to Santa Barbara for a quick bite.
This place is simply stunning! No wonder when looking into staying here it was crazy expensive.
All good though, as you can see the rest of the ride up wasn’t so bad.
It was great to arrive at our home in Paso and looking forward to seeing all this beautiful place has to offer!
While everyone we know seems to be in agreement that life moves faster as we grow old, packing up and moving every few months really highlights how quickly time flies. Even more reason to enjoy every minute!
We came off our holiday kick and hit up San Antonio to meet up with our homeboy Abes.
If you don’t know Abes, well he’s the man which was illustrated by him getting us a dope hotel room for free at the Grand Hyatt right off River Walk…Saweet!
While Abes was wrapping up with work stuff, Amy and I strolled about and hit up the cool/touristy spots San Antonio is known for:
Alamo
River Walk
Once Abes was finished with work, we made a mandatory stop at a corner store to pick up pounders and lotto tickets being that the lottery was worth about a billion dollars at the time!
From there we continued to romp around and own the city (or at least in our minds we did)
The next week I headed down to Florida to spend time with Moshe and handle some biz. Luckily, Rebecca was in town and we crewed up with Christina, Janet and Larry for some bomb Greek food at Greek Islands on A1A.
Meanwhile, Jeska and Amy were eating every single item on Uchi’s menu.
Literally – you don’t want to know what that bill was.
Once Amy and I were reunited in TX, we met up with Jordan and Jeska for our last real night out in Austin. Thanks to Cmart we had an AMAZING dinner at Foreign & Domestic.
On our last weekend before dipping out of Texas we needed to get one more Wally hike in! He took us and the pups for a beautiful scenic hike – wouldn’t expect anything less…
Really appreciative of the time we spent with the Walrus and looking forward to more good times in Montana when he comes through.
And of course, we could not leave Austin without trying The Picnic!
As you can see, this place is a playground of AMAZING food trucks in one area.
Amy was compelled to get one last Chi’lantro meal (I understand)
I read about a glorious truck called “Hey…You Gonna Eat or What?” and couldn’t pass it up. Their altered version of a Reuben was insane!
Not to mention the hilarious punch lines all over the truck…HA!
On our last night we took a break from packing up and hit up The Mueller Café one last time. $10 bottles of wine on Wednesday and really good brisket for a café attached to a supermarket, well we needed to say goodbye!
Austin, it’s been more than real! We love this city and appreciate all the great times in TX.
Our serene camping trip to Enchanted Rock over Christmas gradually transitioned into a wild and eventful New Years.
The party got started with Becky and Tyler arriving and they were ready to conquer Austin. We got started by hitting up Zilker Park and enjoying the beautiful scenery.
Quite candidly this entire week and a half, from Christmas through New Years, is kind of a blur so not recalling the order of everything but you’ll get the point.
We took Tyler and Becky to 6th street and hit up the Driskill in what apparently has become a mandatory stop when we have guests arrive. We appreciate Becky and Tyler manning up and sitting on the cowhide 🙂
From the Driskill we hit the Reggae bar that we’ve come to know well, Flamingo Cantina, and embraced true 6th street hitting up Maggie Mae’s – we had to show them why 6th Street is referred to “Dirty 6”!
For our next day trip into Austin we toured South Congress which has become one of our favorite places.
Tyler & Becky enjoyed all the unique specialty shops and of course we had to give them a taste of Texas Cowboy spirit with Allens Boots.
No way we leave South Congress without grabbing a margarita from Guero’s!
Hmmm, as I’m reflecting on these memories I’ve come to the realization that as we approach our last month in Austin, this place isn’t new and foreign – it’s become familiar and like home. Kinda fun to show people around as we’ve hit our stride and have gotten to know this wonderful city.
Talking about familiar staples of Austin, we also made it to the Elephant Room for some Jazz.
That was the night the expression “you were Tammied” was born. Basically this drunk middle aged woman named Tammy decided she wanted to sing, but as soon as she got on stage she froze and was politely escorted off. Ahh memories.
Enter next guest to the scene – Josh came to get a taste of Austin…literally. First order of business was to get some Texas BBQ. We tried hitting up la Barbecue and arrived before it opened; even so the line was crazy long!
We hunkered down and got ready for the wait when an employee approached us apparent late comers and proceeded to tell us they’d already run out of food…BEFORE IT EVEN OPENED – WTF.
All good though, we had a backup plan in place: John Mueller Meat Co. (the same owner of la Barbecue).
We hustled back to the car and prayed that the line would be more reasonable; it was – thank god. Let the slaughter begin.
With Josh joining the crew, we headed back to 6th Street the day before New Years Eve to watch Micah’s band Micah Shalom and the Babylonians play at Flamingo Cantina.
Once again Micah rocked it out and we all had a blast.
New Years Eve! The crew has just hit its peak with us being joined by Jeska and Jordan along with Jackson arriving from Calgary. Time to get it in.
We pre-gamed like mature adults with Mediterranean grub paired with Moscow Mules, or Copper’s as Amy and I like to call them.
From there we headed to Emo’s to watch the absolutely incredible Thievery Corp. Wow! We all had a blast and I can’t wait until our next opportunity to see them again.
From there the crew started thinning out and only Jackson, Jeska and Jordan remained. We kept the party going and hit up Kung Foo Saloon for some giant Jenga.
When we were done with that we headed to Jess and Jordan’s truck to go to the next spot, but it was towed! With anyone else, that’s a night ender…not with the Rayboy’s though. They sucked it up and the fun continued. We had so much fun no pictures are available.
On Jackson’s last night in Austin he had yet to get any BBQ which is sacrilege if you’re going to be in TX so we hit up Terry Black’s and, once again, proceeded to slaughter.
Feewwww…what a ride!
This madness went from 12/25/15 to 1/5/2016. There is no better way imaginable to have rang in the New Year.
Forever grateful for our amazing friends and good fortune!
While we’ve definitely had our share of outdoor activity since coming to Austin, we’ve been itching for a bigger dose; the past couple of weeks we got it!
It started with a trip to Adams Rocking A Ranch for some Texas style fun.
We rode up to this 400+ acre ranch in Central Texas on a Friday night and woke up on a sunny Saturday to the site of free range cows enjoying a beautiful property.
We toured the property, let the dogs be dogs, and scoped out a good spot for target practice
Aaaannnd we put in some work
So thankful to Bubble and the Adams family for giving us free reign of this amazing place.
In the middle of our consecutive weekends in the Texas Country we headed into the city to meet Micah and Jessa for a night of Ramen at Daruma Ramen and Reggae at Flamingo Cantina.
The Ramen was proper and Micah killed it on the horns as usual.
Enchanted Rock (Finally)
There have been a couple of bad weather weekends that prevented us from getting to the rock, but the day of Christmas Eve it was gorgeous.
We took the two hour drive from Austin and went right to the Summit Trail.
It was a super steep climb and we’re out of hiking shape so I needed a rest. Didn’t hurt that the scenery was incredible up there.
From the summit, instead of heading down, we hit a connector trail to Echo Canyon Trail.
The canyon was a bit of a fun challenge to navigate; we followed it to Moss Lake where Chica had a chance to take a dip
From there we headed back to our campsite and set up shop. I picked the most secluded site which was awesome except we had to carry everything from the parking lot to the site which was a pain.
Once we were set up it seemed like the right call as the campsite filled quickly. We were surprised to see how many people were camping out Christmas Eve.
It was a beautiful night with an incredibly bright full moon. Felt good to be spending the night outdoors.
The next morning we decided to climb the Summit Trail again for exercise before heading home. It was super muggy but still beautiful.
What a great time to precede the upcoming festivities of New Years!
Another amazing couple of eventful weeks in Austin; we’re getting re-acclimated to city life and are enjoying all this amazing place has to offer…crazy we’re approaching the tail end of our stay here!
Knowing how quickly the end will creep up, we were resolved to hit up Franklin BBQ – supposedly THE best BBQ in the land, so no way we don’t check it out. I’ll get back to this, but here’s a sneak peak to hold your interest.
So knowing this meat-fest was approaching, we decided it would be best to grab seafood the night before and ended up having an early anniversary dinner at Eddie V’s. All I have to say is stack your doe and try this place out – incredible.
With full bellies and an appetite for more booze and music, we finally checked off hitting up the Elephant Room, a divey jazz bar that we’d heard good things about.
This place had a good vibe and as you can see from the picture below, we had fun.
Alright, back to Franklin BBQ. So this place opens at 11 and usually runs out of food by about 2. People know this and start waiting in line super early.
At first, we weren’t so into the idea of waking up and waiting hours just to grab some BBQ, but sound advice from our Austin hommie Bubble changed our mind. He basically told us to bring lawn chairs and booze and treat it like a tailgate. We’ve learned to trust Bubble’s advice and he wasn’t wrong.
We met some super cool people in line; it’s such a small world. Met Jake, an MMA fighter, the owners of Green Aisle (an organic grocery shop in South Philly), Adam, Andrew and Charlotte and a nice guy from Colorado. If you know anything about us, you know that we had a lot in common with all these great folks.
As the line started moving we were pumped and before we knew it (4 hours later) we were in.
Words can’t describe the aroma, but you can see the place has a dope vibe.
As we approached the counter, the meat tender (?) put out some brisket burnt tips to get us completely amped up about this experience. We put in our order – one of everything please – and with the efficiency of a seasoned surgeon our boy served it up.
As our new Philly friends referred to it, the slaughter began – sorry, not sorry, vegan friends!
Isn’t it weird how you can feel amazing and terrible at the same time? As the meat sweats kicked in later on, we knew we needed some physical activity the following week.
Fortunately our resident Austin outdoors guide Wally took Amy on a bike ride (while I watched football) and showed her an awesome trail that we’d hit up in later in the week.
This trail is right by our house and basically disappears you from the city. So beautiful.
Another fun development is that Jordan and Jeska posted up about an hour north of Austin.
Fast forward to the next weekend, Jordan bought us and Wally tickets to the UT v UNC basketball game. On our way to meet up with the crew, Amy and I stopped for a pre-game meal at the Texas Chili Parlor – mmmm.
There was a picture of me post meal, but I couldn’t bear to put it up. I looked how I felt – fat and sloppy. Fortunately we had a 15 minute walk to the Frank Erwin Center.
The gametime atmosphere was festive and Texas fans came with unrealistic expectations of a win against a top tier basketball team.
Incredibly enough, those unrealistic expectations were realized and UT came out with an unbelievable buzzer-beater win. We were all happy campers.
After the game we celebrated by introducing Jordan and Jeska to Chi’Lantro – YUM!
Even Chica was pumped about the win.
To wrap up an awesome couple of weeks we headed up to the RV for a sunset ride on Jordan’s Porta-Bote.
This thing is literally a foldable boat and I’m convinced it breaks every law of physics in the universe by staying afloat. I mean we literally just roll the thing into the water.
But viola, it does float and we had a beautiful evening in the CO RIver.
Not sure it gets better than Thanksgiving and this year our family had something extra special to be thankful for – Rebecca’s (AKA Captain Jackson) safe return from her oversees deployment.
With that, there was no choice; the family headed out to Tacoma, WA to celebrate her return. Not that it was a tough sell, with Becka cooking and the beautiful WA scenery there wasn’t much that could keep us from going.
Our first day in Tacoma was spent taking in the views. First was a pit stop to an awesome viewpoint of Mt. Rainier.
Ahhh how we’ve missed the mountains!
Next destination: Beautiful Point Defiance Park for more scenery and a mellow hike to work off the massive amounts of food we’d be consuming in the coming days.
After about a 3 mile hike or so, it was Beer O’clock and Becka took us to a lovely watering hole – Pint Defiance. See what they did there 🙂
The selection was yummy!
Notice I haven’t mentioned anything about food yet? That’s because we hadn’t eaten since breakfast and we certainly worked up an appetite. Our 7:30 reservation at Dukes Chowder House couldn’t come fast enough.
Jordan and Jeska surprisingly made it to the restaurant before everyone and it was a good thing too because we were not waiting! The crew together at last.
As for the grub, the name says it all, we munched out hard and the chowder was official!
Thanksgiving Day!
The pictures speak for themselves: cooking, booze, football and family. Doesn’t get any better than this.
Those of you that have been following know that there is no way we pass on an opportunity to check out a National Park. Becka being Becka was game too and Olympic NP being just a couple hours away was a no brainer. Unfortunately, the north entrance to the park was closed due to weather – first time in history! – BUT we made the best of it utilizing the beautiful trails right outside the Park’s welcome center.
The trails were beautiful and even cooler, wildlife was abundant!
So grateful for this wonderful experience and such fun company.
With these past few weekends we’ve started to get our local swagger going; we’ve become more familiar with our surroundings, allowing us to dive into what I like to call knowledgeable exploration.
As we learned in CO, you can feel like a deer in headlights while trying to navigate through life in a completely foreign surrounding. Now it seems the “what do we do first anxiety” is fading and we’ve settled in to a nice exploratory routine.
Needing a fix of outdoor activity we ventured back to Austin’s amazing 350 acre Zilker Park where we hiked along the Barton Creek Greenbelt.
This trail is 8 miles long with really beautiful scenery on the immediate outskirts of the Austin metro area – so nice!
We rested up for a little bit after the hike and got ready for what turned out to be an awesome night.
First we hit up Salty Sow. This place is UNBELIEVABLY good. By far the best food to date in Austin and we’ve had a lot of really good food!
From there we were feeling Jazz music and heard the Brass House was a good place to go; definitely an official jazz spot. The place has the ambiance you would want for this genre of music and the cocktails were solid.
We decided to keep it moving as the early band wrapped up and remembered that there is a weekly comedy show at the Velveeta Room that starts at 9. We hit that place up for a laugh to end the night.
If you’re thinking “wait, end the night when the show starts at 9?” Yes, you’re right, early night. We were home by midnight with bellies full of good food and booze and we’re not sorry about it 🙂
As the next weekend rolled in we got lucky. The forecast was incorrect and instead of a rainy Saturday we got a beautiful day of warmth and sun. Weather in Austin at the end of November definitely doesn’t suck.
We decided to take advantage of our good fortunes and hit up Bull Creek Green Belt. To fuel up for our hike, we found yet another amazing hole in the wall breakfast shop, S-H Donuts. This place had awesome reviews for its Kolaches which we fell in love with after our visit to the Czech Stop on our Dallas excursion a couple weeks back.
This place is legit!
With full bellies, and motivation to undo all the good badness we just ate, we headed to Bull Creek District Park to get on the trail.
Pretty sweet houses over looking Bull Creek. Gotta love the Hill Country!
Once we got past civilization this place was super nice; exactly what we needed after our workweek.
With all the rain Austin has been getting the water was unusually high disrupting what would normally be an easy crossing.
A little bit of water aint stopping our day out.
That evening we decided to follow the winning formula from last week: dinner and some sort of show. Second Bar & Kitchen had awesome reviews and were deserving of them. Yum!
After dinner we took a walk to Cheer Up Charlies, a super cool little venue, unfortunately the bands we stayed for sucked. Oh well, still a great night out in Austin.
Grateful for the past couple of weeks going into Thanksgiving. Tacoma, WA coming up for our trip for the holiday.
Jesse and Dory have arrived in Austin! Queue a long weekend of site seeing, gluttony, and oh yeh, Eagles Football in Dallas!
For some icing on that cake, the crew arrived just in time to celebrate Chica’s second birthday and we had a party.
We all worked up an appetite after raging at Bartholomew Park and hit up the Chi’lantro food truck parked on the University of TX campus before heading to the Spider House Café to watch Turkuaz jam out.
We had no idea who this band was, but they were incredible! We will absolutely see them again when they come around next time.
Our plan for a Friday tour in Austin was to hit Barton Springs which is a three acre natural hot spring within Austin’s incredible Zilker Park.
Unfortunately, because of the flooding the previous weeks, the Springs were closed and we super bummed.
Not to worry though, we drowned our sorrows in food for the remainder of the day hitting up Bangers and Torchy’s Taco’s for lunch and dinner respectably. We were so into the food we forgot to take pics!
After our dinner we rolled out to 6th street for a night on the town traversing between dives and the swanky landmark Driskill Hotel where fancy beverages – including the age old Shirley Temple – were imbibed.
Most of the time drinking too much can be a bad thing, but with this crew’s love of good food, it only served as a soaking agent for all the food we would consume.
Dory, being the connoisseur he is, came to Austin with multiple solid food requests including Juan in a Million.
This is a hole in the wall with absolutely BOMB breakfast tacos; I have a feeling we’ll be back for another taste before our time in Austin is up.
One item we needed to cover was to get the boys onto Lady Bird Lake (CO River) to check out the natural beauty along with the borderline ridiculous houses in the area. A little walking was definitely in order after the Juan in a Million experience.
After taking it in, we headed back to the house to digest a little more before our dinner reservations.
This place is so good and to top it off there was live music happening right in the upstairs dining room. Austin we love you for that!
With all of us experiencing a severe food coma after thoroughly stuffing our faces with BBQ, and a long day coming up for the Eagles game, we decided to take it easy and hit up a comedy show.
We basically rolled our way from the restaurant to The Velveeta Room to watch what turned out to be a great bit performed by Jeremy Essig.
Game Day!
Ahhh Sunday has arrived and we are ready for some football!
The drive from Austin to Dallas is about three hours with a magical spot about half way through called the Czech Stop that serves incredible Kolaches.
If you don’t know what Kolaches are, it’s basically your choice of meat with incredibly fluffy doe wrapped around and it is heaven. We would stop back there on the way back down to Austin.
When we arrived in Arlington and parked up, my camping gear was repurposed for tailgating; needless to say, we were prepared.
The only thing better than the great weather and bangin’ bison burgers were the hoards of Eagles fans roaming the parking lots of AT&T stadium. The fear of getting stabbed – while still ever present – was greatly diminished.
Sooo, we decided to show our hosts some authentic Philly love.
After the Eagles came up with a BIG overtime win we proceeded to shame our host stadium even more.
At this point with a rough loss at home, you would think an honorable guest would humbly depart, but Philly fans are not honorable. We are rabid fans, uncompromising fans and when we win, we like to celebrate!
Celebrate the Eagles fans did.
You’d think this was the Linc!
Arriving back in Austin Monday evening, the trip was winding down and we were still ecstatic that the Eagles put on such a show! We kept it easy that evening with some BBQ at Café Mueller which didn’t disappoint.
The morning Dory and Jesse were departing, the last thing that needed to be done – of course – was eat! We hit up Torchy’s on the way to the airport and indulged!
Great weekend, amazing friends! Thanks for coming guys!
