What's behind door #3?

July 22

Avid blog-followers,

Remember a couple weeks back when we ran into some fellow road trippers in Yellowstone, who were went to UVA and now live in Portland? In our brief conversation with them, they had tipped us off on a free breakfast option in Austin. Since free food is one of our favorite things, of course we had to try it out when we were in the city!

We first packed the car up, and said our goodbyes and thank you’s to Megan and Chris for putting us up for a couple nights. Then we headed to the original Whole Foods in downtown Austin for the “Whole Foods Breakfast Graze.” The Yellowstone girls had told us that early in the morning Whole Foods puts out lots of free samples. Their advice was to wander around the store and try as many as you could and soon you would have yourself a complete breakfast! Unfortunately we got there a little late for the samples (Yellowstone Girls said to get there by 7AM… we got there around 9AM), so there were only five samples or so to taste. They were all delicious but not enough to call a real breakfast. To fill the remaining space in our bellies we broke down and bought some bagels and muffins.

During our foray into Whole Foods we decided to split up and tour the store solo, each with the mission of finding an interesting food to share in the car. C got pita and southwestern hummus, B got cupcakes and bean dip (not to eat together), and K got Quack n’ Bites (or Quack-a-Doodles, as she likes to call them) – basically goldfish crackers shaped like ducks.

We got on the road to head towards New Orleans. We were making good time until it started to DOWNPOUR! The roads had poor drainage systems and it was hard to see so we decided to pull off at a McDonald’s to wait out the worst of the storm. (From all of our stops at McDonald’s you might think we are auditioning for Supersize Me 2, but we swear it’s really just for the Wi-Fi!)

Once we got to Louisiana, most of the roads we drove on we long, flat bridges over marshlands. B & K looked through the windows to try to spot alligators, but didn’t see any. C was relived.

The trip from Austin to NOLA is about a nine-hour drive, so we didn’t pull into the Big Easy until about 7:30 PM. We had made arrangements to stay in the guesthouse of Chris and Kendra, friends of some of our friends who had recently moved out of the area. We found their house and rang the doorbell. No one answered after a few minutes so we walked around back to where we were told we would find the guesthouse. Little did we know that when we walked around to the backyard we would find not one but three doors! We had no idea which door was the guesthouse, so we tried all three. Door #1… kid’s playhouse… door #2… shed… door #3… neighbor’s house… or so it looked. C called Kendra to make sure we were in the right place (and we were), but for a few minutes we were thoroughly convinced that we had just walked into a neighbor’s house. We met Chris a few minutes later (who also assured us that we were in the right place) and enjoyed talking to him for a little while and seeing some of the interior of his beautiful house!

The guesthouse was the perfect amount of space for us, and had so many amenities that we have not been used to having – a normal person’s idea of space to sleep three, a real kitchen and the fastest Internet ever! We made some dinner and watched the finale of Glee online. (B hadn’t seen it yet, so we hadn’t been able to talk about had what happened for the whole trip!) Then, after a couple hands of rummy, we called it a night and climbed into bed.

Mileage to date: 6,701

States visited: Texas, Louisiana

Yellow car count:

C – 275

B – 277

K – 334

Highs and Lows:

Group high – Guesthouse

Group low – Downpour and needing to pull over because of it

C high – New Orleans

C low – Mosquitoes

B high – Finally watching the Glee finale!

B low – Sooo Hot

K high – The awesome guesthouse!

K low – Whole Foods Breakfast Graze kind of sucked