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 6^th 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 6^th street hitting up Maggie Mae’s – we had to show them why 6^th 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 6^th 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.

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 6^th 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.

Back to Lamberts!

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!

Well we are a month into Austin – that was fast!

We kept the fun rolling from the first few weeks, albeit at a slower pace, and decided to get our music in with some My Morning Jacket at the Austin Music Hall.

The venue had a good vibe and when the band played “Wordless Chorus” the audience came alive – it was memorable for sure and we’d see them again just to relive that moment.

The rest of the weekend was shaping up to be kind of a bust with Hurricane Patricia dumping buckets of rain on Texas.  But yeh, no, rain aint ruining our party!  It didn’t in the mountains of Colorado and it sure as shit won’t in Texas.

We hit up the Violet Crown Cinema – which was official – to watch “The Martian”.  The theater has huge comfortable seats and, even better, a stocked beer and wine bar where you can buy food and drinks to chill on while watching your flick.

Life is good

And of course what would an Austin blog post be without a cameo from Wally.  It’s actually kind of funny how this guy finagled his way into three blog posts so far.  He’s the man though; he’s like 80 and is in better shape than most 30 year olds we know.

Wally also knows every inch of the Austin outdoors and took us to Zilker Dog Park with the pups and then Red Bud Isle Off Leash Area; a little peninsula jutting out into Lady Bird Lake (the CO River) where we randomly ended up at while canoeing two weeks prior.

The cherry on the cake: since Chica and Lilac love each other; Wally is our permanent dog sitter when needed.

Surprises, we love surprises! Alex sent Amy some Philly memorabilia.  Thanks Alex!  We miss all you people back home like crazy!

Halloween in Austin. 

Only one word needed to describe it accurately: INSANE!

We started the night watching Philly’s own TU Owls fight the good fight against Notre Dame at Lavaca Street Bar – in full costume.

Some might argue I didn’t even dress up considering my role as Amy’s slave was cemented when we said our vows.

Since we had a hunch it would be wild on Dirty 6 we bought tickets for a show featuring DJ Thibault.  As you can see from the first Halloween picture above, we were absolutely right.  Place was a madhouse… damn,  we must be getting old.

The music at the DJ show was awesome, but not enough people and energy showed up, hence the foray out to 6^th Street.  Funny thing is that once we saw the madness we scurried back to our mellow (relative) show – yup, we’re old.

After the fun we headed home and Chica seemed a bit confused.

Winding down the weekend we got some nice weather and decided to explore Austin.

The State Capitol

With the ACL music festival happening our first two weekends, we avoided the madness of Zilker Park.  Now that it was over we were free to venture out to that beautiful part of the city and fortunately, we had a tour guide!

Wally, who stayed with us in Palisade along with his Doberman, Lilac knows every inch of Austin and its beautiful outdoors activities; the man actually cleared his own trails in the area for more peaceful hiking.  Who better to go with…our first hike in Austin was fantastic!

On the way out to meet Wally we noticed that we passed Chuy’s – legendary Tex-Mex.  So on the way home it was a foregone conclusion that we’d have to stop there to replenish some calories after the hike.

Place is classic.

The hike was a nice warm up for the busy and active weekend we had teed up for Amy’s birthday.

On Saturday we rented a canoe from Rowing Dock and enjoyed a nice few hours on the Colorado River or what locals call Lady Bird or Town Lake.

It was awesome to be outdoors and seeing so many other people enjoying such a beautiful day.

There were some pretty official houses on the edge of the cliff overlooking the river; what do these people do to afford that??

After about three hours on the canoe we both worked up quite an appetite and headed to Chi’lantro to get their famed Kimchi fries along with some pretty awesome tasting tacos and wings.

Chi’lantro we will be back!

On the eve of Amy’s birthday we were home playing backgammon and gearing up to get to bed early so we would feel good for our planned hike the next day.  Waking up the next morning and getting ready for this hike felt great.  We both thanked our past selves for making the right call and not getting banged up the night before Amy’s big day.  Hello 32…

While there are not nearly as many options as Colorado for some solid hiking, Austin has an impressive amount of choices for a big city.  We chose a relatively challenging hike – RiverPlace Nature Trail – which was about 6 miles of constant incline and decline.

We were both grateful to have gotten back out into the nature.

After a few hours resting up we got ready for our dinner reservations at Uchiko.

Girl is looking good at 32!

We heard great things about Uchiko; it is a spinoff of Uchi where we ate a few years ago so we knew it would be good.  The restaurant being completely packed on a Sunday night confirmed our optimism before we had a single bite.

Be ready to drop some doe if you hit this place up.  That said, you get what you pay for; the food was delicious!

We had one more obligation to fulfill in this jam packed few days and that was Monday Night Football – Eagles v Giants baby.  Since we don’t have cable at our rental, there was no option except heading back to Mr. Tramps.

If you didn’t read the last post, this place is an awesome Philadelphia Eagles bar.  So awesome in fact, it gives you an option to order a cheesesteak in two different ways: Geno’s or Pat’s.  Only problem is they don’t know how to spell Geno’s!

Amazing week, incredible town and killer eats.  Oh yeh, the Eagles won!

Well  we’ve arrived in Austin and just like that we’ve started the next chapter of our amazing adventure.  Fittingly, it started with a bang!

Jordan was arriving to Austin late Thursday evening  (day after we arrived) so while waiting to pick him up we headed to the Flamingo Cantina to watch our old buddy Micah play some music.

The next day Sean (who was randomly in Austin for a conference) arrived and when Sean’s in town it’s ALWAYS interesting.

We all had a hankerin’ for some legit Austin BBQ and Lamberts came highly recommended.  Needless to say we munched out hard!

After leaving Lamberts with very full bellies we strolled to 6^th Street (Dirty 6 as the locals call it) to find some live music and ended up enjoying some Texas Country (I think I just made up that genre) at the Dizzy Rooster.

Sean wasn’t the only random to be in Austin on our first weekend. Frank and Joe happened to be in town so we left Dirty 6 and hit Rainey Street to meet those two hooligans at Bangers.  This place is a huge German style pub with an awesome outdoor section and fantastic beer.  At some point we NEED to hit it up for brunch too -the food looked awesome!

We rolled around to a few bars on Rainey and then headed back to Dirty 6 to meet Jeska and Jordan.  The night gets hazy from here and pictures are scarce, but I know we had a great time.

The next morning we nursed ourselves back to health with some of the best Cuban food I’ve ever eaten from the Cuban Sandwich Café – and yes, I’ve eaten Cuban in Miami!  This place is a hole in the wall that leads to heaven.

Jordan and Jeska, before heading to ACL, took us to “Jack’s Tower”, basically this guy’s house that has a sick view of Austin.

We hung out there and then got dropped off at South Congress where we enjoyed live music and bomb ass taco’s from Guero’s Taco Bar.

That night we hit tons of places, met up with Jordan, Jeska, Frank, Joe and ended the night at 5am.

Few! That was a wild weekend.

With some alone time, Amy and I decided to explore the Mueller District where we’d be posted up for the next 4 months.  What better place to start than Torchey’s Taco’s which is a good place to grab a drink and grub within walking distance of our house.

On our second weekend we hung out with Micah and his girl Jessa back at the Flamingo Cantina and watched Micah jam out with another Reggae band.

And while there were so many fun memories packed into the first two weekends a shining highlight was Mister Tramps.  Amy decided to catch up on some sleep and I rolled out to this self proclaimed Eagles bar in Austin and it did not disappoint.

There was an entire back room with three huge projector screens that was filled with wild Philadelphia fans and we watched the Eagles destroy the Saints.  This was great for everyone except for the lone (and brave) Saints fan that watched the game with us.  He was appropriately shamed.

Austin – YOU ARE COOL!