Day 8 & 9: Houston & Austin Texas

What a way to wake up for a birthday! Today is Theresa's birthday and she's on the beach in the state she was born in! Ironically, Clint and Ariadne were worried about making Theresa's birthday special. For her, it was already special! Going cross country in an RV for 3.5 months with your loved ones was a present of a lifetime!

Ariadne picked out a cake with lots of frosting to bake for Theresa's birthday. The RV has a microwave that also is a convection oven. We haven't used the oven setting yet, so the cake was the first attempt! It turned out perfectly even though it was "microwave" baked for 25 minutes! While the cake cooled down, we went to the beach for an hour before heading into Houston. It was a windy day at the beach but we still had fun.

We said good bye to the beach and drove to Theresa's other aunt and uncle's house in Houston for lunch. Theresa was excited to have some home cooked Vietnamese food on her birthday. It's hard to prepare Vietnamese food in the RV because you need a lot of spices, condiments, and specialty foods (which you can't find in Walmart). Everyone was excited to meet Ariadne for the first time.

Leaving Houston, we drove to our destination for the night McKinney State Park in Austin, Texas. Another one of Theresa's uncle was meeting us at the park and taking us out to dinner. Clint had surprise dinner location for Theresa's birthday. It was one of her favorite restaurants...Inn and Out Burger! Yay for double stacked animal style hamburgers and milkshakes! :)

The next morning we went for a bike ride to see some cactus and waterfalls. The roads were mostly pathed, so Ariadne enjoyed being able to bike herself and kept up with us.

Before leaving Austin, we swung through downtown to see the campus and football field. Theresa was a little stressed driving the RV through the small streets and taking up 5 parking spaces in a faculty only parking lot! But we enjoyed the quick walk through the campus before making the drive to San Antonio.