Day 15

Day 15 - Austin, Tx. to Dallas, Tx.

Today was a sad day. I dropped La Sara off at the airport bright and early this morning. A sad day indeed. But someone around here has to be an adult, and it most certainly isn't me.

After dropping Sara off at the airport I made my way back in to the center of downtown Austin to the State Capital Building. When I arrived I was the first rally MINI there! So I got the lead spot at the front of the pack to come. I was about an hour and a half early for the morning meet up so I walked about 6 blocks to the Starbucks to grab a snack and a decaf and finish up on the blog from yesterday.  Today was going to be an easy and short day, so I thought. After my decaf I made my way back to the crowd and mingled and shot a few pictures. When I came back to Tycoon I realized that I was no long first in line, grrr, some of the locals had butted in line. Bummer. I know for sure I'll never be this early again so there went my chance to be first out of the gate! But they sure were showing their Texas spirit, long horns all the way!

The local club members gave us free Texas MINI stickers, so Tycoon is rocking her Texas Union Jack now. I'm really loving that sticker, its a great idea and design.

While mingling and checking out the sites I met up with Ali, one of the Brits who flew over to do the whole trip and is hitchhiking with a different MINI driver everyday. His blog is jcwadventures.com and asked to ride with me today. I said of course! So we loaded his suitcase in the back and got ready to roll.

On a side note. Yesterday there was a bit of drama on the road that we missed. On the route a couple of MINIs were apparently extremely rude and reckless and were passing dangerously and on chip seal roads and in construction zones. They tossed rocks all over a bunch of MINIs, damaging a custom paint job, breaking a few windshields, and hitting cabrio owners in the face with rocks. It was a big hubbub on the web forums yesterday and honestly starting to look like there was going to be a lynch mob this morning. The offending MINI drivers gave a short speech apologizing. I think there was a lukewarm response, but no boos or lynching. I won't go in to detail on my opinion of the matter since I wasn't there, but the stories from yesterday are not pretty.

Ali and I saddled up and prepared to head out with a full police blockade and escort to the highway. Yippie Ki Yay we are on our way. It was a quick drive out to Franklin, Texas to a drive through safari! Oh my gosh, this place was so much fun. As soon as we drove over the cattle guards the animals swarmed Tycoon. I'm sure Tycoon was a bit worried for her paint job, and ruining her brand new hand wash from yesterday, but we were having a blast. Camels, deer, buffalo, a highland cow all sticking their heads in our window looking for some good chow. Prairie dogs yelling at us, a donkey chasing us down the trail, little piglets! So much fun. Thank goodness we were at the front of the pack because the MINIs towards the back had to wait a long time to get in to the park. It was fun and so worth it. I even found a mini horse for the MINI club! Gah, dying of cuteness here.

After the safari park I let Ali take the wheel for a drive. Watch out! Brit on the wrong side of the road! He was actually very respectful of Tycoon and didn't want to do a hair over the speed limit and took very good care of her. When we got to a bit of a twistie road that MINI USA had found for us he put his go pro on to film a little bit of the road. The twisties were hard to resist and he opened her up just a little bit.

Once out of the good stuff we were stuck back on the highway. At one point we were a bit confused by MINI USA's route and ended up going around in a complete loop on I175. All of the sudden it looked like groundhog day and we both looked at each other thinking, weren't we just here? Crud, oh well, I guess we will become NASCAR drivers Ali said. Touche my Brit friend, touche. Back on track we made it to Dallas relatively quickly and dropped of Ali at his hotel. It was a good, fun day with great conversation and a great story to tell! I got to motor with the Brit hitchhiker!

I decided a nap was in order before the evening owners event so I crashed for a good two hours this afternoon. I probably shouldn't have, because I woke up tired and in a funk. Be prepared for a pissy paragraph and stop reading if you don't want pissy Erin. Can I just say, I'm really not liking Dallas. Maybe it's because we have been out in the middle of nowhere and small cities for the past week and me for two weeks. But this city is so jumbled and makes no sense, every road is under construction and shut down with no detour signs to get you back where you need to go. None of the gps systems are updated so they try and take you down closed routes. People drive like bigger aholes than in New Jersey. Sorry, dude, I'm going 80mph and there are 6 lanes of people across the highway in front of me. I CAN'T GO ANYWHERE SO GET OFF MY ASS. I guess we really are headed east.

I made it to Gilly's of Dallas, a famous saloon, for the evening owners event. I was so hungry I needed food asap. So I bee lined for the buffet which looked amazing! I had myself three plates of small food and was ready to chow down. I walked around for 15 minutes trying to find a place to set my plate down and eat, but failed. It was seriously lacking in tables for the number of people there, standing and sitting tables. Every time I tried to stand or sit people were guarding spots like they were the holy grail and Jesus was just over there grabbing a coke. And I just broke. I'm tired, I'm hungry, oh did I say I'm tired? I found a corner of the bar and ate my now cold food over the trash can. Trying to hide my face in the corner as I lost my shit and had a good crying jag going. No idea why I couldn't get myself together, I'm chalking it up to hormones and blaming it on Winnie.

But of course the MINI community always knows how to boost your spirits. After getting some food in my belly, 4guysinaMINI's Sampson started talking to me. This guy is just the best. We had so much fun and such a nice fun chat that he totally pulled me out of my pity party and at least got me past the weepies. So I pulled myself up by the boot straps and walked around and took some photos. The mechanical bull from Urban Cowboy is here! MINI also had an up and coming country singer give us a concert. She was awesome. I'm going to have to figure out what her name was again because she rocked.

As I was taking some photos of her I started talking to a MINI guy I hadn't seen before. He introduced himself and said he was one of the execs for MINI of Dallas. What a small world my friend. I told him I called his dealership 3 days ago. He looked at me and said, "Oh my gosh that was you!?" Guilty as charged, guilty as charged. I told him that despite one of his people not knowing what MINI Takes the States was she was very nice. He said he felt terrible, which he really shouldn't to be fair. But we had a bit of a laugh at the fact that the two of us just started chatting and happened to run in to each other. See, small world MINI.

By this point it was definitely time for me to get out and get some real sleep so I decided to go. And of course got LOST ON CLOSED ROADS IN DALLAS. GRRR. F you construction and Waze, you are being a bitch, go home.

Goodnight.

*Pictures are going to have to wait. I'm exhausted and we have a haul to Memphis tomorrow*

Day 14

Day 14 - August 1, 2014 - Lubbock, Tx. to Austin Tx.

No RAIN! Sara and I made it through the night with no rain. We didn't break out the tarp and slept with the tent flaps open. It was glorious, beautiful, and nice and cool. We were up before the sun today because we wanted to get a jump on the run and get to Austin as soon as we could to get Tycoon's oil changed. Somehow even though we woke up at the same time we have almost every day the sun hadn't started to come up yet today. We ended up breaking camp in the dark.

The morning event was held in the parking lot of the civic center in Lubbock. Rather than get in line for the rally we parked off to the side in order to escape as soon as we grabbed some breakfast. We saw a MINI we hadn't seen yet, a great countryman with a Canadian theme and a plate that said "MINI Eh". Love it. Since today was Sara's last day on the road she stocked up on some MINI swag while I grabbed us some burritos and we prepared to head out.

 We didn't follow MINI USA's route for today because we wanted to get to Austin as soon as possible. So we just wazed the route and beat feet out of town. It was a rather boring drive, it looks a lot like Ohio I think. We caught up to Bill in the Stuck on MINIs RV about an hour in to the trip, waved and got a great big rig beep from him.

Most of the day we were on two lane roads with speed limits of 75mph. My kind of back roads.  I had the cruise set at 80 which means I'm really doing 77. Police don't even blink at you. I felt like I was getting away with something the whole time. You never get to go that fast on roads like this back east.  There were a ton of wind farms along the way. I was actually shocked at how many there were. I have never seen so many outside of California. I always thought Texas was oil wells as far as the eye could see, but today, it is windmills.

We stopped for gas and a potty break in a small town outside of Coleman I think it was. After filling up I went in to the store. To say this was some Texas chainsaw massacre type place is being nice. In the bathroom someone had carved "RUN" into the sink. Ummmm, yeahhhhh. I also had to disassemble the back of the toilet to get it to semi flush. I hate being courteous sometimes because really all I wanted to do was take that advice and run as fast as I could from this place.

On our way again, Sara had picked up a bag of something called cracklins? I had never heard of such a thing. I didn't think I wanted to try these things. I knew that they were something along the lines of pork rinds, but I'm from the North yo. We don't do that stuff. But you have to try new things. So I tried. They weren't terrible, kind of like crunchy popcorn with hot spices on them.

 We arrived at MINI of Austin and were helped immediately by the Service Manager who got us right in for an oil change. What a great MINI dealership! Everyone was extremely helpful, even in the midst of being inundated with MINIs. We were in and out in an hour and a half and they even HAND WASHED Tycoon! Now you want to talk about service, that is some service.

That Texas sun is BRIGHT!

Shined and clean after her hand wash pampering.

Sara and I were still early for the party so we checked in to the hotel near the airport for the night. Sara is flying out super early so she booked us a hotel right next door. I immediately laid down and took a power nap while Sara freshened up. We then decided we needed some food since we hadn't really eaten all day. When in Texas, you must eat BBQ. This place was amazing. The ribs fell off the bone and the sides were delish. We pigged out and sat on their patio and came to the conclusion that Winnie is for certain a carnivore. We sat there and watched her completely freak out through my shirt. I guess she likes BBQ.

 Our relatively quiet day ended with an epic party in Austin hosted by MINI of Austin. Complete with a rocking band, armadillos, and pictures with long horned cattle! Everywhere you turned there was something totally Texas and totally awesome. The armadillos were so adorable! They were rescued from places where they otherwise would have been killed or died due to injury. So these were all ones that were about to be released back to the wild. The one I'm holding was about to fall asleep in my hands, and then he peed on me a little bit. I guess he was just trying to prepare me for Winnie. Our Buzzfeed guys caught up with us and interviewed Sara before we departed and we took one last photo with the 4 of us together.

Here is where things get interesting. We wanted to find some souvenirs from Austin, magnets, teeshirts, etc. Around me took us about 3 miles away in to downtown Austin and in to quite the sketchy area of town. We easily found a spot to park about two blocks from the shop, on a corner with what appeared to be local characters hanging out under a sign that said, No open alcoholic containers, no sitting or sleeping on the sidewalk, no solicitation, no... you get the idea. The police had someone sitting on the curb up the street and the paddy wagon was at the other end just waiting for customers. As Sara went to get a ticket to park one of the officers came up to her and said, "Are you going in to downtown, I wouldn't recommend leaving your car there for an extended amount of time". So we practically ran to the shop, selected our wares, and high tailed it back to Tycoon who was receiving a certain amount of interest.

And that ends our night. Not as exciting a day as usual, but don't worry, I'm sure we will have plenty to come in the next 8 days. Off to sleep in a king sized bed tonight!

Goodnight.

Day 13

Day 13 - July 31, 2014 - Albuquerque, Nm. to Lubbock, Tx.

Well, we had quite the eventful night last night. Those clouds that looked like the poison clouds from the Hunger games. Yes, they were just as bad. This was what it sounded like in our tent.

Around 1am the skies opened up and it started pouring, lightning and thundering. By 2am I was seriously worried about the amount of lighting and how close it was. Probably about 2 miles away according to weather bug. Thankfully we were staying dry even though the wind was trying its best to remove the tarp from over the tent. Joanne texted me to say we might want to think about coming inside the RV. But honestly at that point there was no way I was climbing out of that tent. La Sara being La Sara slept through almost the entire thing. Except for the one time she rolled over, looked at me and just said "Gahahaha" and rolled over and went back to sleep. Probably a better mentality, she got way more sleep than I did. After the storm let up around 230 of course I knew I had to pee and of course the restrooms were a quarter of a mile away. So out of the tent I went. I checked the tarp before going, solid as a rock. I started my trek to the bathrooms down the street. As I was walking and about halfway there a van drove down the street. When it got to the far end I realized it was turning around to come back. RADAR ALERT. I ran in to the bushes in front of the United Methodist Church to hide myself because this was just plain weird. So after the van drove by again, I said to myself. CPB ( Clandestine Pee Break ) and I admit, just used the bushes in front of the church and high tailed it back to the tent. Creepo, you aren't getting this girl.

It was relatively quiet by this point so I got another hour and a half of sleep before the alarms were going off to wake up to head back to Sandia MINI for breakfast. We efficiently packed up the tent, stopped for our morning Starbuck, and found our way back to one the the best MINI dealers in the Country in my opinion. They had a great spread laid out for us again, all kinds of spicy southwestern burritos. I was hurting from the lack of sleep, but today was going to be a good day.

 We departed Sandia MINI with a full police blockade allowing us to go through red lights to get on to the highway. It was great, they were just waving us through right on to our route. Out to the countryside we drove, hundreds of MINIs on a caravan to Roswell! Unfortunately it was a very boring drive, flat and sparse.

But the MINI USA photographers made it interesting as always with their fearless tactics.

We arrived at what MINI told us was the last gas for 100 miles so almost all the MINIs stopped. You can imagine what chaos this was. Tons of MINIs all vying for 2 pumps and upset because the highest test they had was 86 octane. I'M SORRY TYCOON, it's only half a tank. The worst part was the one bathroom part. It was a good half an hour wait to get to use the facilities.

Back on the road we all flew to Roswell to see the International UFO Museum and Research Center. I'm sure you can imagine what this is all about. It was a bit corny, but fun and fast.

We met Kyle and a few other motorers for lunch at the Big D's Downtown Dive. Wow, all I can say is wow. The food was fantastic, so good so that I didn't even take a picture of it. But we did grab one on the way out.

Only a few hours from Lubbock we all high tailed it out of town. On yet another super straight road we set the cruise for 80 and just motored. Unfortunately this wasn't fast enough for some people, including a Family Dollar tractor trailer who ran us off the road while trying to pass another tractor trailer. I'm trying to get a video from another MINI who caught the same truck doing the same exact thing on his gopro. It is scarey, let me tell you. This guy should not be on the road.

*Update, thanks to Darren Keeley for the use of the video. I'm pretty sure he is the "MINI Eh" car that you can see in my pictures for tomorrow. This is his video of the crazy Family Dollar truck that was running us off the road.*

We made it safely to the Texas border and were greeted by members of MetroPlex MINI. They gave us a big Texas welcome.

We easily made it in to Lubbock and pulled in to the campground right behind Joanne. Bill had already beat us there earlier by taking the more direct route with the RV. Sara and I set up camp, minus the tarp since the forecast was for a beautiful evening. After pitching the tent and getting everything squared away we went and found the statue of Buddy Holly, probably the most famous person ever from Lubbock. Kyle texted and told us some of the group were meeting at the Caboose cafe for dinner in an hour so we went to scope it out. We walked in and walked back out. Um, not for us. So I found a place that had good reviews on Trip Advisor, The Crafthouse Gastropub. We arrived there and knew we had found the right place for dinner. This will probably go down as the best meal of the trip. Kyle and the crew ended up there as well when they saw the Caboose. I sat and blogged as we ate. It was probably the best green curry dish I have ever tasted and the dessert pie was SINFUL!! It was a graham crust with a layer of dulce de leche then bananas and a thick whipped cream topping. AMAZING.

Off to bed after a quiet night, we were solo tonight, no MINI party. Oh, and no rain in the forecast!! Windows to the tent open, yay!!

Goodnight.

Day 12

Day 12 - July 30, 2014 - Grand Junction, Co. to Albuquerque, Nm.

Sara and I woke up a bit wet this morning. Get your heads out of the gutter. Somehow over night the entry way of the tent flooded a bit and our sheets at the foot got wet. So we were curled up in little balls all night trying to keep our feet from the freezing cold wet area of the tent. It rained a bit over night but mostly we stayed dry. We packed up camp for the morning early since the meet and greet was starting super early at 630. While getting ready to fold the tent I realized there were about 30 ittsy bitsy spiders all over the top of the tent. AHHHHHACKCKC!! BURN THEM WITH FIRE!! I can deal with ANYTHING, bugs, snakes, you name it. I BLOODY HATE SPIDERS. After much dancing around, swatting and itching and a bit of screaming, I got them free and clear so we didn't have hitch hikers and packed the tent away.

We made our way back over to Allen's Unique Auto's for a morning breakfast. We decided that we wanted to get a start on everyone because trying to park and depart from there is a bit of a hassle.  We grabbed some breakfast, and went for seconds at Starbucks. Needless to say I was hurting this morning and did not want to wake up as evidenced by this picture.

We made our way out of Grand Junction heading towards the Rockies across fields and farms. While driving we realized in the distance there was something that looked like a plane flying very irratically. Is it a bird? A plane? A drone? A glider? As we got closer I realized it was a crop duster! And this pilot had balls the size of coconuts (As General Conway would say). He was dive bombing the fields like the best fighter pilot in the Marine Corps. I swear at one point he even split the electric lines that were at the edge of the field. Sara and I were watching, gasping at every pass.

Continuing on our round about route down country roads we came upon the town of Ourey, Colorado. A quaint little town at the base of the mountains (around 7,000 feet) and stopped to see if there were magnets and collectables. We noticed the massive amount of Jeep wranglers rolling in to town and asked about them. It turns out this is the Mecca for Jeep enthusiasts. There are no less than 10 mountain passes that they go off roading through and Jeep badges for each one. I briefly considered taking Tycoon down with the ALL4 and then thought better of it after seeing the condition of the Jeeps coming down off the mountain. We drove instead through Red Mountain Pass, the Million Dollar highway, Rt. 550. It was magnificent, and terrifying at the same time. No guard rails, 400 ft. drops, breathtaking mountain views, and waterfalls. The waterfalls were almost completely dry by this time of year, but the scenery was like being punched in the chest, it made you breathless.

As we were coming back down off the mountain we ran in to a massive amount of traffic. We had heard there had been an accident on the road about 40 minutes ahead of us. But we had thought that it would be cleared by the time we got there. Unfortunately it was a terrible accident, much worse than we had known about. At the time we didn't know who or what type of vehicle was involved. The entire highway was shut down and we were being diverted through a golf course and resort to get us around the accident. We tried to ask if there were MINIs involved but no one could tell us. We didn't find out until we made it to New Mexico that thankfully no MINI drivers were involved, but terribly, 3 people were killed when an suv crossed the yellow line and hit another truck head on. A 4th passenger was air lifted.

 Not long after we arrived in Durango, Colorado. What a great town!! We decided to stop for a bite to eat at Jean Pierre's French Bakery in downtown Durango. This place is legit! We had an amazing lunch. I had spinach and mushroom quiche with a tomato and chevre soup. Can I just say wow. Yum, yum yum yum.

On our way we went, heading towards New Mexico. After hitting the border we stopped at the Apache Nugget Casino and Rest stop where we were greeted with restrooms and freshly fried Indian fry bread. It is a lot like funnel cake that you get at the boardwalk, maybe a bit heavier. But woof, it's good, but reeks havoc on your insides. We continued down the road starting to get tired and bored. La Sara realized that she had forgotten that the remainder of the pop rocks were still in the door. So I joined in for a funny video moment. Gotta love the pop rocks.

We arrived somewhat earlier than usual to our evening stop in Albuquerque and decided to go straight to Sandia MINI to get a service notification checked out and possibly the fuse replaced that we blew. The first MINI arriving gets in to service! Five minutes later everything was ready to go. Fuse replaced and power ports activated, and informed that it was time for another oil change! Holy macaroni, I had the oil changed right before I left for MINI Takes the States, which means that we have motored for almost 5,000 miles on this trip already!

Rather than leave I decided to sit down and try and charge up the computer and get some blogging done for all of my three readers. Yes yes, I know more of you read it than that...my six readers.

The party started all around us at Sandia MINI. Bull rides, cow roping, fantastic food, a band, and everyone from Sandia MINI came out. What a great dealer, seriously, this was probably one of the best evening owners events we have been to so far. You couldn't ask for a better host. The MINIacs of Albuquerque are certainly in good hands with this dealer.

 Sara and I wanted to try and hit a few Breaking Bad locations before the sun went down so we left a bit early and went on a scavenger hunt. We found Walter Whites house! As we were pulling up we realized that the owner was standing out front of the house. Rather than slink away we walked up and started talking to her. She was a super nice lady and has lived in the house since the 1970's, raised her kids and her grandson there. She talked to us for about 10 minutes telling us how the film crew just knocked on her door and asked to use the exterior of the house to film when they were making the pilot episode. Six years of filming later, it took them a week to get the house to look like it did in the finale. It was the middle of winter, so they had to shovel snow out of the way, a crew spent a week wrapping the tree in front with fake leaves, and making the rose bushes look like it was summer. We asked if she regretted it since now people show up to her house all the time. She said no, as long as people are respectful and don't come on the property she doesn't mind it at all. We asked to take a selfie with her, she said no, but that we could feel free to take a picture of the house.

After the house we went and found the car wash, which really isn't A1 car was. It is the octopus car wash. On the way there were some ominous clouds coming over the hills. It honestly looked exactly like the poison fog clouds from the Hunger Games. We realized we were in for a rough go of it tonight with the weather.

 After getting a few quick pictures we high tailed it back to the camp ground to set up camp before the storms rolled in. It took some looking to figure out where the bathrooms are here. Turns out they are about a quarter of a mile away around the back of the office. That is most certainly going to be a hike if I have to pee in the middle of the night like I always do. Sara was the one who finally found it, when I asked if she went in she said "Heck no, would you want to go in there alone, I know I don't". Turns out it was very clean, just very creepy. We managed to get everything buttoned up at camp and us in the tent just as the storm opened up around 1000. Boy did it come down and come down hard. It sounded like it was going to come through the tent, but thankfully moved through somewhat quickly. The forecast says that we are supposed to get more rain around 1am so lets hope that everything stays tight and dry.

Goodnight!