Past Travel: San Antonio and ATX

This morning Zach is off to San Antonio for work this weekend! 

So naturally, I have been thinking about my week in San Antonio/Austin/Waco area a couple of summers ago!  

I got to work at an amazing summer camp in East Texas my sophomore of college. God has given me a couple of amazing best friends in every season of my life. The summer of 2013, I took a quick break from my internship and visited two of the best, Beka and Meredith. 

Beka basically lives in the coolest places. I visited her in Fayetteville once, and then Austin and San Antonio, and now she is in Seattle settling into her new job! Meredith drove down from Dallas to hang with us and now is chilling in Denver!

 I landed starry eyed in Austin and Beka took me straight to South Congress to Hop Doddy's for hot dogs and Parmesan fries! 

It was bright hot and amazing everywhere. We walked in out of shops and found a pen of puppies and a bunch of other weird/cool things.

She took me on a driving tour of the city. We saw a nearly naked woman jumping on people's windshields with protesting signs.  

And that was my welcome to Austin.  

We toured Austin real well the next few days.

We ate at Home Slice Pizza

Torchy's Tacos (where I would get food poisoning during my engagement 1.5 years later) 

Gourdough's Doughnuts. I still remember the taste! haha

3 years ago!! We look like little babies :)

Daily coffee was at Houndstooth Coffee!

We ate ice cream at some beautiful river walk area. Now this is 1970s camp vibes.

Ate all the brunches at Magnolia Cafe

I went to Anthropologie for the first time in Austin. And I DIED. I was getting ready to head to Italy for the semester and day dreamed all the way through the store about the wardrobe I could take with me.

Before we left, we hiked up a baby path and popped out to this view of the city! It was awesome. 

Then we went north and spent time in Waco. We visited friends, grabbed Cowboy Coffees at Common Grounds. I get to revisit Waco every time I watch Fixer Upper :)

Then we went south, past Austin, to New Braunsfels to float the Comal River! It's not like Midwest river floats. It's an actual river, but kind of really nice and manicured. Everyone does it, and I see why.

We popped out of the river and ate at Rudy's BBQ and ate our weight in ribs and sauce.

AND Then we stopped in a suburb to say hi to a friend that was working at the same camp!! It was a dream to see an Iowa face in Texas :) This is an ode to Madeline who is off to grad school next week!

First stop in San Antonio was to see Beka's sister's new puppy! AND that's when all of the puppy love began. 

Then we ate at this great Mexican restaurant: La Gloria. My hazy memory remembers that it was part of the Pearl area. Home to the chicest and hippest eateries.

Not pictured, but we sat outside on this dirt patio and ate some amazing food. I remember feeling SO CLOSE to Mexico :) There was maybe chili lights strung up (but in a cool way....)

WE WENT TO THE ALAMO!!!

My quick tour of San Antonio was over the next morning. We grabbed coffee from Local Coffee and headed north to ATX again!

We did a last farewell tour of Austin.

OH, I got a quick tattoo on my way out of town! I learned so much about where joy comes from during my summer in Texas at  Pine Cove so it only felt right to get it tattooed in the hippest city in Texas.

"The joy of the Lord is my strength" was our chanting motto that summer. And how true that became after 10 weeks of hot sweaty jumping, cheering, clapping, laughing, and deep long emotional talks with high school girls :) 

“…This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength”-Nehemiah 8:10