First Day In Austin, Texas

                                   Tuesday 4/16/2013

After setting up we decided to check things out since we were only going to be in Austin for 3 days. I had asked our resort office if they knew if there were any Farmers Markets in the next 3 days. They told me they didn't know about Farmers Markets, but there was an organic farm right next to our resort. It literally was walking distance from our park, but we drove because we thought it was down the road. The organic farm is called Green Gate Farms.

As we drove down the short drive onto the farm we saw this gal.

Wow, what a lot of bacon!

After parking, we walked around trying to find where the Farm stand was. It was very unclear where we were suppose to go, so we just kept wonder around.

I found some goats and chickens.

Then we found this young boy watering this huge pig.

The pig just doesn't look that big in the pictures, but he was the biggest pig I'd ever seen and was amazed at it's size.

Another huge pig came for some water.
We finally found the farm stand but the prices were extremely high, and they didn't have what I was looking for. The stand was a "help yourself honor system". They had milk in the refrigerator, but I didn't know if it was cow or goats milk, and I really don't like to buy raw milk unless I can talk to the owners about how the animals and milk is handled. The place just seemed a little unkept and I like to buy from a place that has a very clean appearance. The flyer that was given to us about Green Gate Farms said it was "Best of Austin Critic Pick" for 2010. I passed on the milk and vegetables.

Next we drove into Austin, to the downtown area. Our park had given us a map of the city, so our first stop was to go to the visitor center downtown.
This is a mural I saw downtown.

We drove around the block about 3 times before we spotted the visitor center. It was in a small section of a building, and the sign didn't stand out like most visitor centers. (Though after looking at this picture, the sign looks pretty big. Boy are we getting old)! Once at the visitor center, I got a person who looked up the farmer market dates and locations for the next three days.

 I am the one who wanted to come to Austin. If it had been left up to Joe, we would have drove right on by. Austin downtown is a mix of old and new buildings.
( As you can see Joe tries to save on my laundry chores by wearing the same cloths over and over).

Our next stop was to "delish" in downtown Austin.

I like to watch, "Unique Sweets" and "Unique Eats" on TV because if you know me I l have a real sweet tooth. About a month ago, the show featured Austin's best places for sweets. Delish was one of the featured places.

A picture inside delish.

Their special flavor for the day was the Almond Joy. 

I love Almond Joy candy bars, (the dark chocolate ones). Joe gets a picture before I eat it. I guess I am just like Joe, I had this same shirt on it my last picture, also. I do rotate the cloths every 3 or 4 days before wearing them again, and before washing them. Maybe Joe does the same?
I was very disappointed in the cupcake. It was not any better than what I could make.  I wasted my sugar in-take and money on it for nothing. I am very hard to please when it come to food. I have been still doing my yeast free diet, so when I cheat, I want it to be worth it. After two months of eliminating sugar, I finally lost the 6 extra pounds I gain while in Alabama during Thanksgiving and Christmas. The diet is more for cleansing, with weight loss as a side benefit.

Next Joe and I wanted to try the "Food Truck's we had heard about on the Food Channel. The visitor center told us where the majority of the Food Trucks were, so with our map in hand we drove across the Lady Bird Lake/river to the south side of Austin.

All of the trucks looked old and bedraggled, not the shinny new trucks we had seen on TV. We both walked up and down the row of trucks trying to figure out what we wanted to eat. None of them looked that appealing because the entire place looked dirty and unclean to me. I decide on the Coats & Thai because it was way after dinner time 

I ordered the vegetable and pineapple stir fry. It was ready in about 1 minute. On the food shows we have watched, the good places to eat, the food takes at least 10 to 15 minutes to be ready, because everything is made fresh. This evidently came out of a pot already mad . And to top it off it was served with white rice. I don't eat white rice. Joe always tells me I need to ask more questions and not to assume. I'm a slow learner. Needless to say, I was not happy with my meal. I ate 1/3 of it and took the rest of it home. (Joe ate the rest of it, a few days later. (He is not as fussy as I am about  what he eats). This is one of the reasons we don't eat out much.

Joe went with the Mahi Mahi Fish Taco at another vendor. He said it was OK, but it had a spicy sauce that was a bit too spicy for him. We both agreed we would have been better off saving our money and eating at home. It is always about the money for Joe and the type of food for me!
 Unfortunately it wasn't til after we left Austin that we found an article in a Austin Magazine that I picked up at the visitor center that told which Food Trucks, out of the nearly 2000 food trucks in Austin, that are worth trying. Three days in Austin was just not enough time, to get the information, and see it and do what we wanted to do. 

This is a picture of downtown Austin as we drove back across the river to go back home. We didn't like taking the interstates home because it was too hectic. Instead we preferred to drive through Austin on the MLK (Martin Luther King) highway to our new neighborhood just east of the city.

As we drove along the MLK highway we saw this sign and I yelled at Joe to turn in.

The visitor center didn't tell us about this one and it was right on our way home and open at that time.

It was not that big, but it did have local organic vegetables and a fair price. If you haven't figured out by now, food and where it comes from is very important to me.