San Diego Zoo

Lions and Tigers and Bears ... Oh My!!!



The San Diego Zoo has one of the largest and most varied animal collections in the world. We saw everything from dung beatles to panda bears. Most of the exhibits of them were open air - there were times we were so close you could reach out and touch them, not that you would want to in many cases.

I tried to reduce the number of pictures as much as I could, sorry there are so many. Enjoy!

Andrea



Monkeys. Terrible signs. Lots of bears, including the smallest species bear in the world (forget their name but they are damned cute) and two of my favorite bands (Panda Bear, Grizzly Bear). Old ladies sitting around watching meerkats and talking about their fantasy world of underground moms currently giving birth and the temperment of each of the babies. Bouncy floors around strange statues. Walking, but in comfortable shoes. Sad elephants. Asian people (I believe the panda bear exhibit is like their Mecca). Majestic tigers. The lack of weather in San Diego (which is a beautiful thing). Great day. Tired.

Mike

Todd vs Food: Austin Edition

Mmmmmmm..... food. I can't think of a better thing than an excellent meal. It's one of my primary considerations in how I feel about a place. That said - here's some good places to eat in Austin and perhaps we will keep this updated with food from places we visit!

A few of our favorite eats in Austin ...

Curra's
One of our favorite Mexican Restaurants in Austin, possibly because it was 2 blocks from our house when we lived there (or more likely because the food is awesome). When we came back recently this place was our first stop.
A few things on the menu that we would recommend:
To start things off an Avocado Margarita. This is a tasty blend of a traditional frozen margarita, avacado, and cilanto. It's a refreshing treat, much smoother and creamier than a regular margarita.
Mexican Martini - they have these all over town and it's basically tequila with olive and lime juice as far as I can tell. It's not as sweet as a margarita and packs a serious punch. They have a good version at Curra's.
For dinner there are very few things we've been dipleased with. Our favorite would have to be with the Cochinita Pibil, slow roasted pork wrapped in a banana leaf, served with bananas .... ?

Try not to get to full, because there's still dessert, I'd recommend the Tres Leches.

Austin Java
So I never went here while living in Austin, and I fear that some Austinites may spite me for falling for this chain, but hey, it's an Austin chain! Walking distance from the RV park we stayed in. Not only do they serve a variety of coffee drinks, smoothies, and tea, they also have food, REAL food (and beer). I would also like to note that this place even further excited me when I found out that the coffee is organic and they have a heart healthy menu.
Some of the things we enjoyed there
The Strawberrilicious Smoothie
The Breakfast Quesadilla
The Toasted Sesame Chicken Sandwich
The Spicy African Peanut Soup
(Andrea)

P.Terry's Burger Stand
Our Favorite Burgers in Austin! They also have great tomatoes, that's right, TOMATOES! This place is the reason I have started eating them again. The location off Lamar has a beautiful ouside seating area with picnic tables and large trees that provide shade. I usually go with the Chicken Burger with lettuce tomato and mayo, and Mike gets the Double with Cheese and onions.
(Andrea)

Flip Happy Crepes
Crepe-y goodness out of a trailer lovingly made by two nice young women. They've got dessert stuff like berries or Nutella but the real treats are in the savory crepes - (think pork with pickles and mustard). Worth the lines, but you can dodge them altogether if you get there early. Also, they beat Bobby Flay on his TV show, Throwdown. And I hate that guy.
(Mike)

Uchi
Saved the best for last. Fantastic sushi creations. Raw tuna with apples and goat cheese? Check. Silky pieces of fish over puffy clouds of rice prepared by sufficiently serious-looking Japanese gentlemen? Check. Best food in Austin? Check.

(Mike)

Mushaboom Playlist

We've been driving a lot lately and listening to podcasts (never not funny, ricky gervais, jordan, jesse, go!) and one music playlist - the mushaboom genius playlist.

I load up my iPhone with the 10 newest unplayed episodes from the podcasts I listen to and, for music, I add a variety of 100-song "Genius" playlists (these are created by selecting a song and clicking the "Genius" button - iTunes will guess which other songs in your library might go well with it). One that I made using "Mushaboom" by Feist has been especially good. We've listened to it 12+ solid hours over the past week and it's still not tired. Here's a sampling of the tracks:

1. Mushaboom - Feist (obviously)

2. We're Going To Be Friends - The White Stripes

3. The Way We Get By - Spoon

4. Keep The Car Running - Arcade Fire

5. Wolf Like Me - TV on the Radio

6. The Greatest - Cat Power

7. Chicago - Sufjan Stevens

8. Silver Lining - Rilo Kiley

9. Maybe You Can Owe Me - Architecture in Helsinki

10. On Call - Kings of Leon

I'll try to post some more playlists in the future - maybe even some geographically themed ones...

\Mike

Carlsbad Caverns

Today we ventured to Carlsbad Caverns here in New Mexico. After a beautiful drive through the Carlsbad National Park, we bought some tickets to a tour and took off toward the caverns. There were two options to get down - an elevator and the "natural entrance." We took the natural entrance and you'd be stupid not to do the same. You are within the cave in about 5 minutes and the temp drops about 20 degrees instantly and all of the other tourists and such seemed to have taken the elevator. It's a pretty easy walk down a winding path into the cavern and it's kind of cool to see the transformation as you get deeper and deeper - there's about an extra hour of cool cave crap to oogle at on the way down to the "Big Room."

After a 700 foot decent (took about an hour) we started the King's Room tour with a guy that could be a gay version of John Hodgman. The tour added some "off-limits" rooms that weren't on the self-guided section of the "Big Room" and included two pretty crazy chambers. Saw some awesome stuff and eventually figured out how to use the camera (the trick is to set the camera on a rock and leave the exposure open forever). WIsh we had a tripod - it should be on the website as a required item if you plan on taking any pictures. We saw a bunch of people using flashes, which is pretty much useless.

Anyways, the pictures are in the flickr feed on the right. There is honestly no way you could capture the size and beauty of the place on film, but we tried to get as much of it as we could. They look so much brighter than it really was in the cave - you can see a lot more detail in them this way and they do look cool as they are, but don't think that it was like Disney World. It was more like Mordor, and in a fantastic way. It was definitely the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. We stayed for about 5 hours and could easily go back for another day (with a tripod this time) if we weren't on to San Diego.

Mike

please view more pics here

Pecan Grove Austin, TX

I'm not sure where to even begin with this one. As many of you know Austin became a favorite of ours after living here for a year and we've missed it since we left. Well we came back - now where do we stay? I had heard from some locals that there was a wonderful RV Park here, so I did a little research and we found it - Shady Grove RV Park. It has a wonderful location, close to so many of our favorite places in Austin. It is filled with cool people, some sweet Airstreams, and a good bit of shade provided by the trees spread throughout the park.

Andrea

Yeah this place is freaking sweet. I could throw a rock and hit some brisket, good coffee, and an excellent little grocery (Thom's Market). Walking distance to P. Terry's (which is a damned good substitute for some In-N-Out Burger (spoiler alert - we may get the chance to eat some INO again soon). Hmm, it seems I'm very food centric. I'm sure there's other stuff to do, I'm just too full to try any of it.

Mike

Highly recommended.





For More Photos

Remodeled.

Although I still have some projects remaining, to make our little RV a home, here are some pictures of my progress.

Before


After


More Pictures

I am planning to paint all of the walls, and hang some pictures and such, as well as improve the canopy of our bed. I also have to make curtians with the fabric I have hanging over the window .... and the list goes on.