Off to look for a new home this morning; well first things first we are actually looking to see if there is an area around here that we like the looks of. We started off going northwest towards Austin and passed by several small towns; the first one we came to that we explored further was Bastrope. It’s a really cute little place, quite old looking but very well kept with lots of little boutique-like stores. We drove through town and out the other side to check out a house that was for sale. It wasn’t bad looking from the outside although it would be necessary to get in it to find out how much work needed doing. The only problem we could see from the outside was that it is right on a rail track – could be noisy! On the way further north we passed through the newer part of town and it looked ok too.
We headed into Austin after driving for a while and it’s a really neat city. It wasn’t too busy getting in today since it’s the weekend and we were able to drive around quite easily for the most part. The city is quite compact for a capitol, and has lots of cool shops and restaurants, and the capitol building, which is taller that the US Capitol, is easily visible from all sides of the city. The city sits along the Colorado River and there are lovely walking areas along its banks, and we saw lots of people running and walking there. We did hit some traffic coming back through the city, everyone was trying to get to Wholefoods – I guess there are lots of healthy people in Austin. There was also a football game happening and there were longhorn fans everywhere – they are easy to spot in their orange and white – which did cause us a little delay when leaving Austin, but nothing Mike couldn’t handle.

Mike: Austin is nice, lots of upscale shopping and healthy stuff!




After stopping for lunch we took a different route home along the 290 and visited Elgin and Giddings, but nothing in those areas took our fancy. I guess we’ll look some more tomorrow.