Austin... The Best Place in Texas

I'm going to be honest. Me and Jo absolutely despised Texas, we still kind of do, but after visiting Austin over spring break our outlook on Texas has changed dramatically. Obviously we haven't seen all of Texas yet, but by far Austin is the best place we HAVE visited. Just to give you guys an idea of what Austin is all about here are some pictures...

Of course there are no mountains, which is a deal breaker, but I could easily compare its awesomeness to Utah. Austin is nothing but green trees and rolling hills. It is like going to a completely different state from where we live now.

 Before I go any further though I just want to recommend an absolutely amazing camera that we recently purchased for this, and all upcoming adventure trips. Its called the Fujifilm XP 200

This camera is an absolute beast and as you can see takes amazing pictures. It is a weatherproof camera so it is able to go 50 feet underwater, be dropped from 6.6 ft, is dust proof, and freeze proof to -14 degrees. If you are thinking about purchasing a weatherproof camera this is the one I recommend.

So starting our trip off Jo and I left on Tuesday and made the three hour drive northwest to the city of Austin. When we arrived we were in awe with how amazing it was there. It was actually kind of funny because there is all this wilderness and off to the right of us in the far distance we saw a huge city full of skyscrapers, but we didn't mind, as long as they were far away. While planning this trip we ran into a few obstacles. The main obstacle was that there is almost absolutely no where to camp. If we were in Utah we would be able to camp anywhere, but not here. We did however find a pretty amazing place to camp; Emma Long Metropolitan Park. Now this may sound like a city park with a playground, and it was... minus the playground. But it had huge areas that were reserved for primitive camping, which was awesome.

 This place was literally the only place we could find that allowed primitive camping. I guess Texans love their RV's cause there was plenty RV parks. Anyway so we arrived at our campsite and settled in. We arrived at about 7:00 pm so we decided to eat, play cards, and get some rest. The next day was when the adventures began. We started off with some climbing. We chose to climb a fairly diverse wall called Seismic Wall, which is located in Barton Creek. This wall had routes from 5.7 all the way to 5.12. So we loaded our gear up and drove the 20 minutes to Barton Creek Park. The wall was absolutely awesome, and I must say I was about as giddy as a freaking school girl. we started off with a few 5.9's and 5.8's that were prime.

We finished up there and then ended the day with a small hike which was equally awesome.

We had called my sister Leslie and convinced her (somehow) to drive the three hours from where she lived with her five kids and join us, we thought it would be fun for the kids, and it was. Leslie and the kids met us that night at around 7:00 pm and we planned out our next few days.

Wednesday we again began our day with climbing we got everyone on the wall except for Abram, but of course they all had a blast. We again finished our day off with another awesome hike.

Thursday we did some more climbing. My sister, Joanna, and I were all able to do our last climb with was an 5.10a, which was not bad since me and Jo hadn't been on the rocks for 10 months and my sister for who knows how long. All in all it was some good climbing. We finished that day up with a trip to Hat Creek Burger on Bee Caves Road. This place had amazing burgers and the most amazing blue bell ice cream shakes. seriously to die for and highly recommended by all of us. We let the kids run off some energy (by kids I mean the 6 of us Leslie's 5 and Joanna's one...Me) and then headed back to camp.

Friday was probably the best day. We decided to take a drive to McKinney Park, which is about 40 minutes away from our camp, but there were waterfalls there and apparently some sweet bouldering, so we decided it was worth it. We got there and decided to let the kids swim around since they had been asking to the whole trip. We also found some clay which was pretty cool, until the kids thought it was a good idea to camouflage themselves like in the hunger games. It was actually pretty funny.

My favorite part of course was the bouldering. To access it you had to find a large oak tree that had fallen and walk it down to the edge of the river where there was a cavern wall about 200 feet long with boulder problem after boulder problem, it was heaven.

All in all this was a pretty amazing trip. If your every living or passing through Texas definitely make it a priority to visit the amazing city of Austin, especially if you in any way love the outdoors. And like my wife always says, stop and appreciate where you are at now. Always words of wisdom from her.

Love the Nunez Family.

All Things Texas

We have lived in Texas for about 10 months now, and that means 10 months without mountains, hiking, or the most important.. rock climbing. It took us a long time to strengthen ourselves in that sport. Jo was able to complete a 10d rating and I was able to complete a 11d rating. I'm sure by now those rated climbs will be next to impossible, but that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is to show all the awesome things about Texas. My substitution for rock climbing has been surfing.

 even though I have been extremely busy with school I try to go out with my brother when I can. To me its not as much of a rush as lead climbing, but it'll do for now. Me and Jo have been trying to do as much "Texas" things as we can. Of course BBQ is a given, but we have also done things like















a bayou wildlife adventure,

















alligator farms,

Corpus Christi, which was an awesome trip despite the fact that I had a horrible flu! We also went to a restaurant called Dot'z. It was an awesome 50's themed restaurant right by the aquarium with the best hamburgers and HUGE banana splits. If your ever in Corpus Christi I really recommend checking out the amazing aquarium and then heading over to Dot'z for some grub!

 The last trip I want to mention is the Renaissance Festival. This is where Jo was able to fulfill her lifelong dream of....

riding an elephant! (yes for some reason I am on an elephant with two little girls haha) this was absolutely awesome and for 7 bucks it was a steal in my opinion. The renaissance festival was a little over the top, but at the same time awesome. Not a children event by the way. The point of this post is to remind people that even if you are far away from home and are crazy homesick. Try to find things that are unique to the place you currently reside. I am horrible at this, but luckily I married the most awesome woman in the world she is awesome at making the best of where we are at and making sure we see everything that there is to see. We have a lot more planned while we are still here. In fact even in the flat lands of Texas there is some rock climbing, of course we have to drive all the way to Austin to find it, but that is our next adventure which will most likely be the topic of our next post! 

Love the Nunez Family