zimmers in texas

This weekend we decided to take a look at the presidents carved out of the mountains so at 6.30am on Saturday we took off to Rapid City via Denver. The flight to Denver was uneventful but it was a bit of a shock to get out the plane at the "mile high airport" to find everything was covered in snow and it was about minus 2 degrees. We bought pretzels for breakfast and waited to board our flight to Rapid City. This was in a very small plane and only an hour flight and again it was snowing when we landed. We picked up our hire car and headed off for Mt Rushmore to visit George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. It was snowing on the way out which is about 25 miles south of Rapid City. The houses looked just like a scene from a story book. There was a lovely Christmas shop with snow coated pine trees out the front. It looked great.

We visited the presidents and they were quite impressive. We had buffalo for lunch and headed off to see the carving of Crazy Horse, the Indian who was murdered while under treaty. This carving will be bigger than the presidents when it is finished but it will take years and years. It was first started in 1948 and so far they have only carved his face and arm and they have a really great museum with the Indian history and the timeline of the carving. We then started out to for Deadwood which is a small town where Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill or someone like that died. It was about 50 miles away and we got to about 8 miles away but it was snowing too much for us to feel safe so we turned back for the hotel. The snow was starting to pile up along the side of the road and there were patches of black ice on the road so I think we did the right thing by turning around.

We arrived back at the hotel and stayed there for the rest of the day as it was too too cold to venture out.

The next day we had breakfast and headed off for the Badlands and Wall. The Badlands was named by the Indians because of the spooky landscapes and the area has been used as movie lunar settings or other sci fi settings. This area was absolutely fascinating and it was all snow capped just to make it look extra spooky.

We then headed off to Wall which is famous for its drug store. We saw about a million billboard advertising the drug store as we drove in to the town and the store takes up a whole block. Wall only has about 800 people so athe drug store is the big tourist attraction. It was a great weekend and it was really different driving in the snow, too bad it was so cold.

We made it safely back to Austin even though it was a very bumpy flight from Rapid City to Denver. Our luggage missed the flight back from Denver and so it didnt turn up until the next day.

We arrived home in time to hear the end of the Rolling Stones concert and watch the fireworks from our balcony.

With much trepidition we set off for Mexico this weekend. We were a bit concerned about the safety of this venture as everyone we told about our trip reacted with "good luck" or "why would you want to go there" and even "if the police ask for money just give it to them don't argue". We did find one person who had actually lived on the US side of the border in a town called Del Rio who said it was a great town and we should definitely go but don't stay in Mexico late at night. Well we had a great time and will make sure we tell
everyone back at work.

We left on Saturday morning at about 8am and arrived about 4 hours later. Apart from a bit of trouble finding our way to the main street in Del Rio (the street called Main Street is not really the main street) we booked in to our hotel, had lunch and started off for Ciudad Acuna (city of Acuna for those bilingually challenged). There were 3 off us, as we took a friend from work who is a US citizen but not from Texas.
There are lots of border patrols but none of them are for people entering Mexico, only for those leaving. As we crossed over the Rio Grande (big River) we were the lucky 1 in 10 car that got pulled over and the boot searched. It reminded me of all the airport checks we seem to attract. Anway that only took about 2 minutes and off to see the sights. We parked the car and hit the main road ( this one was called Hidalgo or something like that who was a famous Mexican).
Meryl & friend G in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico.
Vanilla essence is very cheap in Mexico and we had several orders from all the people at work (including those who told us how dangerous our venture was), so our first mission was to buy 12 litres of vanilla essence. We managed to bargain the price down to $50 all up which is very very very cheap compared to anything in Australia. I can't imagine what I am going to do with a whole litre of pure vanilla essence but when it was just over $4 it was too good a bargain to miss. The silver is very cheap and there were lots of great jewellry shops. Everything was a bargain but unfortunately I had to keep thinking about getting it all home to Australia so I had to curb my buying habits. Glenn bought a 740ml bottle of vodka for $4.95 and the tequila was about $3 a bottle (cheaper than vanilla) but we didn't buy that. We were on a bit of a tight budget as we forgot to get much cash and if we used a teller we would have been given pesos and we didn't really trust the shop keepers enough to use credit cards. Anyway we managed to get everything we needed and even some things we didn't need but just liked.

Coming back over the border wasn't quite as easy as going in to Mexico. When we were asked if we were US citizens it would have been very easy to say yest and show our Texan driver's license but we felt that honesty was the best policy and told the truth. Of course we had to get out of the car and into the Border Patrol office where they looked up our credentials and sent us on our way.

We had a lovely Thai dinner on Sat night and then home for an early night. Sunday we went to "Whataburger" for breakfast burritos and then headed off to see the sights of Del Rio. The main attraction is a very large dam which traps the water from Rio Grande and the Pecos River. Again there are border patrols everywhere but only checking those travelling into Texas. We had to pass throught 2 of these and I accidently passed our cheque book to the first one as it is in a plastic wallet just like my passport. Thank goodness the trooper didn't think I was trying to bribe him. The second trooper couldn't understand why we would rather be in Texas than Australia. He was really surprised when he asked the question that he must ask a million times a day "are you US citizens?" and we said no.

All in all it was a great weekend and we made a killing on the vanilla essence.

Glenn is off to LA this week to catch up with his Aussie work colleagues and I will be batching. I think I might have to organise a girls night of go shopping. ( editors note - since when is a reason required).
Next weekend we plan to see some more sights of Austin and the weekend after we are heading off to South Dakota to see Mt Rushmore.