Catching Up With the Lindemanns

So, where were we... Oh yes: Snook.

After the bacon debacle, we got a room in College Station, TX (home of Texas A&M). The next day was rainy and gray as we made our way to Austin. This was probably the most boring and tedious drive of the trip. Cattle. Woo!

Once in Austin, we walked around the capitol building, which is really a pretty cool place. We did not stick around the area long enough to look for pictures of my famous relatives, but I'm told they're there. I am apparently a Daughter of the Republic, as a direct descendant of Martin Parmer.

After a walk around the capitol building, we headed down to the sixth street area, which is sort of like the French Quarter for BBQ and beer. Sort of. As noted below, the first thing we did was go into Roux, a cajun restaurant. Other than having a number of items on their menu that were out of date, it was pretty good. Their beignets were not really anything like the real thing in New Orleans, but how bad can pastry and sugar really be? Their grits were fantastic. These were nothing like the watery grits you normally see. This was really amost more like a couscous or risotto dish, and chock full of goodies like corn and bits of pork. We killed a couple of hours in there. Then it was off to Stubbs.

Stubbs is a BBQ place. That's really kind of understating it, though. Stubbs is... well... Stubbs. Kurt had been looking forward to this stop since he first began planning this trip. Although he was feeling a little under the weather that day, that did not slow him down when Stubbs came into view. We split a plate of delicous ribs and brisket, and a salad. Kurt also had some serrano cheese spinach, which looked fantastic, but which I decided was probably a bit much for me. We ended our meal with banana pudding (with big chunks of banana and Nilla wafers... yum!) and apple crisp. It was entirely too much food for the day, but it was Stubbs for heaven's sake!

We decided to waddle back to the car and head west instead of staying in Texas. We'd thought about staying in Austin, or going down to San Antonio, but the weather forecast held nothing but rain and humidity and heat. Never mind that. We high-tailed it out to the desert.

After a refreshing night's sleep in Fredricksburg, TX, we made our way to New Mexico. The fertile land gradually gave way to desert and scrub, and it was clear we were not in Kentucky anymore. After a solid day's drive, we arrived at Carlsbad Caverns in time for one of the last trips down to the cave. It was incredible!



We took too many pictures to show here, but you can look at a collection of the best of them over here.

From Carlsbad we headed west again and spent the night in Roswell, NM, in a pleasant, non-alien-themed Comfort Inn. Across from the Comfort Inn was a small, run-down looking Mexican restaurant. We got some dinner there, and boy were we happy with that choice. The food was fantastic, and the smoked chili lime ribs were out of this world fantastic. We saved the leftovers in the cooler for lunch the next day.

From Roswell, we headed west to the Ice Cave and Bandera Volcano. Yet another very cool thing to see. We hiked up the side of the (extinct!) volcano, and then back down into the ice cave (where the temperature never gets above 31 degrees. Amazing. We have cool pictures, and when I get them uploaded, I'll put some in here. you can look at the whole set here.


Standing inside the rim of the volcano.


Looking down the raggedy stairs to the ice cave.


Ice at the bottom of the ice cave.

On the way out of the Ice Cave area, we decided to take a backroad instead of heading straight back to the Interstate. Another fortuitous choice. This is where the view began to be amazing. Incredible mesas of all sizes and colors. Breathtaking views. Just fanatastic. Again, when I get pictures uploaded, I'll put some here. you can find them here.



As we left the area (Zuni-land, apparently), we stopped at the El Rancho Motel for dinner. This is where the movie stars used to hang out, apparently. It's an amazing, kitschy little place. I played it safe with a BLT, but Kurt dove into some green chili chile, which was almost too hot for him. If you know Kurt, you know how hard that is. He inhaled a pepper seed toward the end of dinner and had to wipe tears from his eyes. After dinner, we tried to make the Painted Desert by sunset, but we just missed it. Instead we found lodging in Holbrook, AZ, and set out early in the morning for Sedona: the most beautiful place on Earth.

And more on that later.

-Colette