1,000 masks

Location: Ozona, TX

12:14 AM CST 2,340 mi 

After a tough day on Friday the wets got back on track today with the first half of our journey into West Texas.  

We left my house around 9:30 and headed straight for the capital city of Austin where we found a free parking lot near UT and spent some time walking around the Texas capitol building.  The place had a lot of cool stuff including wooden postcards which I found to be pretty friggen' sweet. The Texas democrats convention was in town and Obamamania was running all over the place with everybody from twelve year old Hispanic kids to fifty year old bikers sporting their Barack garb.  It was really very interesting to see.  Dan also had somebody ask if it was in fact Coolio on his shirt to which he confirmed their suspicion of course.  

From Austin we hopped back in the car for about an hour to get to San Antonio which was definitely a close second on favorite cities we have stopped in so far.  We went through the Alamo (I *heart* free stuff) and then walked around the area for a while, taking in the unique Mexican style of the city.  

Noticing Luchadore masks in one of the windows we went into a small gift shop on one of the streets and looked at their selection.  The lady in the store was super nice and asked if we wrestled a lot to which Matt aptly responded "not professionally."  At one point she asked us if we were familiar with legendary luchadore Mil Mascaras.  When I told her I was she spent several minutes talking about some of his movies before telling us about this club in town that had a wrestling ring in it.  We ended up not being able to get to it but she was nice enough to give me the address and phone number of the place if I ever go back.   I bought a Mil Mascaras mask to add to my lucha mask collection (3....stop laughing) and we left the place.  

That experience in that little store in San Antonio was probably the surrealist of the trip so far.  For one it was probably the first time in my life that being familiar with some professional wrestler actually made me seem more cultured.  It was also the first time that the distance from where we started really hit me.  It's just incredible how much we have seen in such a short time and how different the world looks depending on where you're standing.  It was very cool.  

After that we ate at a cool Mexican restaurant on the San Antonio river.  The weather was beautiful and the atmosphere was fantastic.  One way or another S.A. is a city I need to go back to.  

When we finished dinner we left the city and started on the 540+ journey to El Paso.  We got some really cool pictures at dusk (see above) and cut off about 150 miles before crashing at this Traveldoge in Ozona.  This hotel is definitely the nicest we have stayed in so far but for the price it better be.  I guess that's the deal when this is one of like three hotels within 70 miles of here.  

Tomorrow looks to be another long day of driving as we try to get into Arizona before we stop. If everything goes as planned we should hit El Paso (and the MT time zone) sometime in the afternoon and hopefully check out the white sands national monument in New Mexico if they are not doing missile testing when we get there.  We'll hope for the best.  I'd really like to see it.  

Early wake up call tomorrow so I'm done here for tonight.  Really good day today and I'm looking forward to seeing some of the awesome landscape in the daytime.