Road Trip: West Texas

We drove out to west Texas this summer, and while it was hot hot hot, we still had lots of fun. Now that temperatures are dropping (well, a little), a road trip out to west Texas sounds perfect. The scenery is spectacular, with an endless sky, beautiful mountains, and incredible light.

We explored the area from our base in Alpine, which is about 20 minutes from the more-famous Marfa. Despite the region's remoteness, there is plenty to do. Marfa is home to the Chinati Foundation, which houses Donald Judd's sculptures and other exhibitions. Some of the work is outdoors, and there's plenty of room to roam, so it's perfect for antsy kids.

Marfa is a very small town and thus very walkable. Traffic is minimal, although beware of the train that blasts through town every so often. There are few chic shops and a number of art galleries all within a few blocks. Marfa Book Company is unexpectedly wonderful. After browsing for awhile, we had a great lunch at the Food Shark food truck parked next door. The line was long but the food is worth the wait. There were lots of modernist picnic tables (meant for sharing), and plenty of room for restless kids to run around during the wait. If you're lucky, the train will chug by while you're waiting!

Marfa is also home to The Get Go, a small but fantastic grocery store. It's packed to the rafters with (almost) everything you could hope for. I bought a cute tote bag as a souvenir.

Downtown Marfa

The Food Shark in Marfa

Hotel Paisano, where we sipped coffee in the courtyard

The Chinati Foundation

We visited the McDonald Observatory, which hosts "Star Parties" most evenings. The night viewing was too late for us, so we opted for a daytime Solar Viewing session, and were rewarded with the sighting of a solar flare. The Observatory was originally dedicated in 1939 with one telescope; the facility now includes five principal research telescopes. 

We also visited the pool at Balmoreah State Park. It's a huge spring-fed pool. Parts of it are paved like a conventional pool, but other parts are natural; in one area the bottom is hard to see it's so deep. We saw a few fish and turtles.

An image from Balmoreah State Park website - look at that water!

Yes, the region a bit of a drive from Austin (or from anywhere!) - but so worth it! It took us about seven hours to get to Alpine, and another 20 minutes or so to everywhere else. The remoteness seems to underline the relaxed mood - there just isn't much to stress you out, and it's pretty easy to go with the flow. We can't wait to go back.

San Antonio Daytrip

San Antonio is my favorite place for a daytrip - there is so much to do, so much history and atmosphere, and such variety of experience to be had.  We started off our weekend trip with lunch at Shilo's, an old-time German-Texan institution right in the heart of touristy downtown. Yes, it is full of tourists, but no matter - it's a fabulous survivor, with its wooden booths, raw plaster walls and tin ceiling.  The menu is full of German-Texan specialties like bratwurst and other sausages, potato pancakes, and sauerkraut.  The root beer is homemade and delicious.

Shilo's (photo from their website)

After lunch the relatives we were touring with suggested going for a boat ride, which is something we'd never done, but which suddenly sounded perfect after such a heavy lunch.  The Alamo could wait.  We picked up tickets down by the riverbank and after a few minutes wait were cruising peacefully along the river listening to our thankfully-low-key and knowledgeable tour guide.  The best parts were when we left the main part of the busy river walk, and explored the more workaday parts of the river - there's just no other way to get this interesting perspective on the city.

One of the floodgates on the San Antonio River (we're about to go through it here)

A river through the city...

And of course - the Alamo!

A bit later, we wandered all around the Alamo, which has lovely (if crowded) grounds.  A side building, originally the Old Convento, houses displays of nineteenth-century military uniforms, guns, swords, and other artifacts.  Outside, my son eagerly joined the crowd of children peering down into the acequia at the huge carp swimming to and fro.  I admit, these fish were really beautiful!

Later on, we tried to dine at La Gloria, but the hour-long wait again put us off.  Instead we found Tomatillo's, just a few blocks up Broadway.  This place is unassuming from the outside and couldn't be called hip, exactly, but has pretty darn good straightforward tex-mex (and good-enough margaritas served in comically large goblets).  Are you traveling with a bunch of kids and just need a good tex-mex place that will make everybody happy?  Tomatillo's is your place.

We had never visited the San Antonio Botanical Garden before, and boy, were we missing out!  It's beautiful and expansive, with so much to explore.  This was how we spent the next morning (and we'll need to go back, we couldn't see everything in just a few hours).

My son pointed out that this tree's not so great for climbing (there's a wonderful collection of potted citrus in the Orangerie in the background)

A map of the Gardens

The Gardens include some charmingly tiny historic houses, wide open lawns for running around in, a children's vegetable garden, a winding acequia, and a small Japanese garden with incredible bamboo fencing...

The Japanese Garden

There is also a series of rather futuristic glass pavilions and courtyards presiding over the site. My favorite, from a conceptual standpoint, was the Tropical Room, which housed coffee, chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, and allspice plants - and many more in a similar vein. Here is the beautiful Desert Room...

p.s. I found out - sadly, too late for this little trip - that Trader Joe's is now open in San Antonio, in the lovely Alamo Heights neighborhood!  The perfect place for weekend trip snacks, right?  Of course, Central Market is always great too (that's where we went - it's worth checking out if you've never been.  Best supermarket ever.).

Austin, Texas: Seven Old-School, Kid-Friendly Eats

Wherever we go, I like to find places that have a kind of authenticity to them - what you could call “old school,” whatever the local language.   As Austin’s population has exploded over the past decade, bringing with it all kinds of cool new places to eat, these old funky places have become increasingly rare.  So, I present to you, my picks for Old-School Austin Eats - all welcoming to children, naturally.  Visit them while you still can.

As you may notice, the dining establishments listed below are not the most healthful sorts of places - this is just how they rolled back in the good old days in Texas.  Burgers and ice cream figure heavily.  However, they do all have character and that counts for quite a bit in my book!  

Top Notch on Burnet Road

Top Notch
Top Notch is a fully-functional drive-in restaurant that serves burgers, fries, onion rings shakes, etc..  They also serve fried pies, which even my husband is nervous about eating.  Top Notch opened in 1971, and seems to have barely changed; you can get a look at it in Richard Linklater’s 1993 film Dazed and Confused.  

Dirty Martin’s
Another funky old burger place - this one has served the University of Texas community since 1926.  It was originally called Martin’s Kum-Bak place, but the dirt floor - now gone - earned it the nick-name “Dirty’s” or “Dirty Martin’s”. 

Cisco's on East Sixth Street

Cisco's
I will be honest and say that I have never ordered anything other than migas and biscuits while dining at this East Side institution.  I happen to find them divine.  My son adores the biscuits with a bit of honey. The walls are covered with framed news clippings about the owners and other miscellany. There is plenty for kids to gawk at and the service is pretty quick.

Nau's Enfield Drug on West Lynn

Nau's Enfield Drug 
This is a rare and precious thing nowadays - a real old-fashioned neighborhood pharmacy with a small lunch counter (and other seating) in the back.  Nau's serves the basics: grilled cheese, hamburgers, etc.  We usually go for the ice cream sundaes, which are just perfect.  

Sandy's on Barton Springs Road

Sandy's Frozen Custard
Sandy's has been handing out soft-serve custard (also known as ice cream - as well as burgers and other lunch grub) from it's walk-up window since 1946.  Located right in the middle of town on Barton Springs Road, it's still the perfect place to stop by on a ridiculously hot summer day.  Picnic tables are in the back.

Quality Seafood on Airport Boulevard

Quality Seafood
This place is part fish market and part restaurant (a little bar in the center divides the two).  It's my son's favorite restaurant - he is obsessed with their fried calimari.  I like it too - it is super casual, quite tasty, and one of a kind.  Sharks and other sea life hang from the ceiling, and the staff are nice as can be.

Matt's El Rancho on South Lamar

Matt’s El Rancho
Warning: this place is popular.  Go early or you may face a bit of a wait.  Otherwise, it’s your basic tex-mex served in a big, rambling, high-energy (but laid-back) space.  Lots of rooms for wandering through (when baby needs to move around); lots of sympathetic friendly people; a great spot for big groups.

Lockhart, Texas: Barbecue Roadtrip!

For some reason, my seven year old gets a kick out of this sign...

There are people who are truly obsessed with good barbecue.  I am not quite one of those people. However, I do love great dining establishments, and Smitty is undeniably one of these (vegetarians might reasonably disagree). 

There are three barbecue joints of note in Lockhart: the enormous Kreuz' Market, the cozy Black's, and the no-nonsense Smitty's Market.  We drove straight to Smitty's Market, which many people consider the best of the three (and one of the best anywhere).  

Yikes!

I won't disagree; I love this place, starting from the moment you walk in.   You open an old screen door and are faced with a long, disturbingly blackened hallway lined with wooden benches.  Everything looks smoked.  At the end of the dim corridor take a right, and behold: Fire!  The pitmasters toss together orders and pile it all on a tray lined with butcher paper.  No forks or knives, and don't ask.  Just pay up and head into the bright dining room in the front, where you can find sides (cole slaw, potato salad, etc.), and dollar cones of Bluebell ice cream.  Yum!

They have good sides too; I always order some potato salad, cole slaw, and beans

My son won’t go near the fires, and it is undoubtedly a little scary back there.  However, he loves the rest of it.  The ice cream doesn't hurt.

After our recent visit to Smitty’s, we walked a couple of blocks to see something really spooky - the Caldwell County Museum, which is housed in the old city jail (built in 1908-09).  I had expected to see a gutted and renovated (read: bland and sanitized) facility, but the original interior has hardly been touched.  It's really more of a Jail-themed museum, rather than a museum of Caldwell County. The ground floor was the warden’s family home, and is innocent enough.  But head upstairs (equipped with flashlights courtesy of the docent), and it’s hard not to get a little spooked.  The rusty cells (cages, really) are basically intact, and you can explore them freely.  The best room in the house is on the third floor; it has great views and nice cross-breezes.

Nice crenellation! That little door is the prisoners' entrance.

A view into the cells

A broom, of sorts

After that we needed a dose of happy reality so we headed to the pool at Lockhart State Park - nothing fancy; it feel like an extra large backyard pool.  On a hot and spooky day, it was just the thing.

The Hill Country: Blue Hole in Wimberley, Texas

On one of the last saturdays of summer, we drove out to the hill country for an afternoon by the water.  There really isn't any other way to make it through a 100 degree day, besides being submerged in cool water.  We headed to Blue Hole Pool in Wimberley. It turned out we weren't the only ones with this idea - we were told at the gate to return in two hours.  So, we found lunch (unfortunately, not at someplace i'd recommend), hit the local thrift store (a 70s Marimekko-esque dress for me, and a game of Connect Four for the kid), and…

When in Rome...

I am happy to report that the Blue Hole was worth the wait.  It's truly a lovely place.

The spring-fed swimming hole itself is just as cold as you'd want it, and the magnificent bald cypress trees along the banks provide plenty of welcome shade and some pleasant dappled sunlight as well.  There are ropes for swinging; one for kids and one for adults.  The bottom is a little rocky - I'd recommend bringing some water shoes.

Beyond that - it's amazing what a bit of thoughtful design can do.  Blue Hole is really just a simple, if picturesque swimming hole.  But the beautifully designed entry, the winding limestone paths, the spacious and well-maintained lawn, and even the signage all make this place feel like somewhere you'd like to linger.  More lingering will have to wait - Blue Hole has closed for the season.  It opens again next summer.

Be sure to check out the rest of the property though - there is a nice little playground nestled up against a big beautiful meadow (currently being restored), as well as hiking paths and picnic spots.

San Antonio, Texas

The bus at Kiddie Park - a favorite!

San Antonio keeps a low profile, but there is a surprising amount for families to do in this faded but beautiful city.  It’s an easy day trip from Austin and we go there pretty often. It’s the 6^th largest city in the nation (as of 2010), but it often feels semi-deserted (outside of the downtown core anyway).  The lack of gentrification means that San Antonio still has oodles of charm. Aside from our chosen destinations, I just like driving around this city – we always come across charmingly funky old buildings dating from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  I especially love the 1920s Spanish-style architecture, which you see all over the city.

What follows is just our most recent itinerary – in future posts I’ll tell you about the Missions (not forgetting the Alamo!), downtown, a crazy restaurant called Mi Tierra, the zoo, and lots more.

First Stop: Kiddie Park!  This sweet little amusement park has been in operation since 1925 (local parents have told me that it was pretty run-down when they were kids – it’s lovely now).  It is refreshingly free of branded characters and in-your-face marketing.  Instead it offers 9 little rides, including an antique merry-go-round, a ferris wheel, mini airplanes, boats, and more.  It is, in a word, cute. It is also a pretty good deal at $13 for unlimited rides (there’s no admission fee).  There is a snack bar (candy, goldfish, pizza, etc.), but you’re welcome to bring your own food and sit at one of the many picnic tables.

After getting his fill of the rides (plus a few games of pinball), we still weren’t hungry for lunch yet, so we paid a visit to Alamo Fiesta.  This rambling store is basically a party store but also has clothing and decorative items.  The many rooms are stuffed to the gills with piñatas, paper flowers, garlands, hats, and more.  Oscar picked out a mini piñata for a souvenir and I picked up some big packages of crepe paper, which they carry in lots of colors (I’ll definitely be buying some more next visit, which I feel will be soon!)

For lunch we dined at La Gloria, in the recently renovated Pearl Brewery complex (now known simply as Pearl).  This bustling place is super kid-friendly (there’s a lawn for them to play on post-meal), but also nice for adults; I’d go there to meet a friend for a margarita anytime. 

My Tacos al Pastor

La Gloria Ice House

While at Pearl we checked out The Twig Book Shop, a small bookstore with a large children’s section (They do a story-time on Fridays).  Next door is Melissa Guerra Tienda de Cocina, which stocks kitchen equipment and tableware with an emphasis on Mexican cooking.  Across the street we found a new children’s clothing shop called Roo & Me – small selection, but worth peeking into if you have a minute…

Melissa Guerra  Tienda de Cocina

Finally it was time to head home - but not before a quick stop at Bird Bakery on the way out of town. This bakery is really all about cupcakes - and they are delicious! Not too large, and slathered in delicately tinted buttercream frosting. Yum!