Texas is big. El Paso, Ft. Stockton, and Austin were our stops along I-10. I shot five rolls during the course of our three night stay in Texas — one night in El Paso and two nights in Austin. A few of my favorite photos from the batch are posted below but you can view the all of the photos (there are a lot) on Flickr.
El Paso was a trip – we basically spent the night, got some coffee in the morning, and got out of there as quickly as we could.
We had plans to take the trip down to Marfa, Tx to see what all the hype is about but we literally missed the turn off and didn’t realize until 100 miles later. Instead we stopped briefly in Ft. Stockton for some Tex-Mex and got right back on the road. That actually worked out because it put us on course to meet my pal Travis Trevisan just in time to catch the Youth Lagoon show at Emo’s in Austin.
We arrived in Austin about an hour after the sun had gone down so I gave Travis a call.
He rode his bike over and I spotted him as I was walking back from the Liquor store. The three of us drank a few beers at the La Quinta Inn where we were staying, located right next to the Texas Capitol building, and we made our way out on foot to the show.
Youth Lagoon played an awesome show, but we wanted to get up semi-early the next day and tour the town so we headed back to our room…but not before some late-night pizza followed by shenanigans around the Capitol building.
Meeting up with Travis was honestly one of the highlights of the trip – He had just moved to Austin a few weeks prior and I think both of us were excited to see a familiar face. We’ve never been super close friends but I felt like we had a mutual respect for each other’s decision to leave San Diego and try something else for a while. I had a blast hanging out with him and I hope he didn’t mind being our tour guide for a couple days.
Before we had made the decision to go south, I had visions of a weird small town tour through the midwest, just because I had never seen that part of the country. I had decided early on I wanted to skip Austin, because I had a feeling it would be really similar to San Diego i.e: tight-knit music scene, some cool bars, fun little downtown, indie shops on the outskirts etc…all of which I am far too familiar with to find interesting (that sounds pretentious but you know what I mean). I felt like I didn’t need to see any more of that. For the most part I was right. Austin felt very similar to San Diego to me in many ways. However, it’s familiarity was endearing and I definitely felt right at home. I’d love to spend some more time there.
Oh yeah, and bats!
The next morning we packed up and headed toward the Gulf, passing Houston with New Orleans plotted as our next stop.
Continued next week…
Here’s the link to the whole collection on flickr as they become available.
