We left sleepy Lake Charles with a view to getting to New Orleans. I had mixed feelings about going there...excitement as I'd heard what a cool place it was, and trepidation as I wasn't sure what to expect after last Summer's hurricane. We'd heard news reports that people were angry that more wasn't being done to help them in the aftermath and they were being left to fend for themselves, but we'd had positive reports from fellow travellers...

You know it's a bad one when a hangover lasts 2 days...still not feeling entirely right, we left Austin and drove in the direction of Galveston on Texas's Gulf Coast - who knew Texas had a coast?! (Every so often I shock myself how ignorant I can be.) It was a 202 mile drive (meaning that we hit the 5000 mile mark too), but the sun was shining and we were just pleased to be leaving Austin - home of much debauchery (and many mosquitoes.) Part of the reason...

We trundled out of Del Rio after a quick visit to the local Wal-Mart where they had a bikini sale - being the eternal optomist that I am, I was forced to buy a few. They were silly money and I thought it might encourage the sun to shine! In San Antonio the sun did emerge temporarily to accompany our being very lost. The city has possibly the most complicated road system in the world! We eventually found the downtown branch of the trusty Motel 6 after a tour of ma...

The day we hit Texas felt like a real milestone, and something of a challenge. We had started preparing ourselves for some serious driving as we were aware of the scale of the state and also that time was moving on and the Florida wedding was approaching. We set Del Rio as our destination, not because either of us had heard of it, but because it got us quite a way into Texas and set us on course for San Antonio, which was one of the places we had on our list to v...

The same day we visited White Sands, we ended up in Roswell, still in New Mexico but edging ever closer to Texas (us, not Roswell)...We headed there purely because we'd heard of it (which was becoming more and more unusual the further we got from 'civilisation'!) because of the whole alien thing, which I think happened in 1947. Anyway, we headed directly for the Motel 6 (as always when there was no hostel!) and then went out to have a look around. Ros...