After a pretty easy drive from Austin we headed straight into downtown
Houston. Wikitravel had told us that the JP Morgan Chase building had
a public viewing area on it’s 60th floor so we parked nearby and was
amazed that you can just walk in, get in an elevator and head on up.

The view was great (pic) although you could only see from one side,
but we can’t complain as it was free.

We then headed over to Mary-Joyce’s very generous brother and sister-
in-law, Mike and Thelma, who have agreed to give us a bed for 2 nights
while in Houston.

Before this post starts we have to also include one big thing we
forgot that we did with Mary-Joyce and that is go to her friend Big
Rick’s 4th of July fireworks display. Big Rick spent more than $5000
on his fireworks and we watched every one go up in a 2 and a half hour
display. It was awesome and was finished off with 2 drunk biker chicks
having a cat fight. Gotta love Texas!

Anyway, yesterday we drove to Austin and today we explored it. It has
a great and cheap downtown bus service which we used to see the sights
such as the state Capitol building (pic) which was very open and we
spent ages just wandering around. Then after we had seen all the
sights we went to dinner before watching some of the city’s 1.5
million bats take flight at dusk. Our final destination for the day
was the Cactus Cafe where we saw singer/songwriter Betty Soo who was
so good we bought her CD for the car.

Tomorrow is the drive to Houston to stay with some friends of Mary-
Joyce who have been nice enough to give us a spare bed for a couple of
nights.

Wow!! We have had a fantastic few days staying with Mary-Joyce just outside Dallas. We stayed in her lovely cabin overlooking the pond.

We went bowling, to Bass Pro Shop, to the Silver Saloon with Kristen and Chase for a night of Country & Western, Ben and Chase fired guns over the pond at MJs, we drove and washed Lauren’s 69 Mustang, frolicked in the pool, saw Chase’s dog’s 12 brand new puppies, visited Lauren and Matt and generally had a lovely time being looked after by MJ. We didn’t want to leave but hey, the trip goes on.

Now on our way to Austin…

Forgive us, this was about a week ago but we’ve not had any wifi while
living it up at Mary-Joyce’s (photos and info to follow).

Anyhoo, this photo is of Ben hitting baseballs in Midland – which we
realised to our horror is also W Bush’s childhood hometown. Ben had
never hit a baseball before so we both gave it a shot for half an hour
before hitting the road to Abilene. Fun!!