Arriving in Austin

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Kori and Eileen

After an entire day of driving, we made it to Austin. We took quite a while to get here, with all the photo-op stops, and the great wineries we have already stopped at. We got to town and immediately started taking photos of local street art.

We were debating the various restaurants with the best reviews we could find. We settled on a Japanese restaurant called Daito. We had a little of everything they had, from sushi to tempura to udon, and it was all delicious.

After grabbing a bite to eat, and taking a few more pictures, we’ve finally gotten in for the night. We’re staying fairly close to downtown. We plan on visiting a few of the popular street art locations tomorrow. For now, we’re going to pop open a bottle of wine and spend the night chatting about how great our adventure has been so far.

-Kori & Eileen

Texas Hill Country Vineyards

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Kori and Eileen

We’re nearly to Austin, we’ve had a lot of fun visiting some of the many vineyards/wineries throughout the Texas Hill country.

The first winery we stopped at was the Wedding Oak winery in San Saba. The staff there were very nice to us. We told them that we had just gotten married and they gave us each a complimentary glass of wine of our choice (we had the Bridal Blush). We tried their selection of wines and selected the Bridal Blush as it was our favorite from the ones we had. We spent a few minutes sitting outside on their patio with our complimentary glasses of wine.

Afterwards we got a tour of their winery. We got to see the fermenting barrels, tanks, and presses they had on site and I took lots of pictures. The room was actually very cold (which I loved). The staff let us hang out there by ourselves for a little while, so we looked around and got lots of pictures of everything. It was quite fun.

After spending time at the Wedding Oak winery, we decided to take a look at the winery’s namesake, the local ‘Wedding Oak.’ About 2 miles away from the winery, stands a massive oak tree with a heart shape knot in the trunk. As the placard read:

A LEGENDARY INDIAN SITE,
POPULAR IN THE 1900s,
WEDDING OAK
SHELTERED MANY MARRIAGE
SERVICES. THREE OCCURRED
IN ONE DAY, DEC. 24, 1911.

Later on we went to Pillar Bluff Vineyards just outside of Lampasas. We drove through Lampasas and walked along the bank of Sulphur Creek before continuing on to the vineyard. We pulled up and at first were wondering if they were still open. Realizing we were just in time, we went in and were greeted by the owner Gill Bledsoe and by the winery dog, Rudy, and the winery cat, Pistil (as in the part of a flower). They had a very nice atmosphere. We sat down and asked to try their tasting selection. We tried the many wines they had including in their tasting, and we had their delicious super secret blue cheese dip. We ended up buying a few bottles of their great wine, as well as the recipe from them for an undisclosed amount. ^_^

We also dropped by the Texas Legato Vineyard across the way, owned by Gill’s brother. We had a look around and took in the atmosphere. It was only just down the street, but when we got there no one was inside, so we took a walk around the grounds and looked at their vineyard before getting back on the road.

-Kori

Goldthwaite

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Kori and Eileen

We just drove through Goldthwaite. I took a ton of pictures. The wind turbines are pretty cool looking. We drove through here on the way to Brownwood, but we couldn’t spend quite as much time photographing these massive energy producing behemoths.

Always nice to see clean energy, especially in Texas. Despite what the opposition may say, anything that reduces greenhouse gas emissions is a good thing. It’s not the solution, but it’s a start, and I’m sure it kills far fewer birds than oil does.

-Kori

Our Wedding Night Dinner

Posted on March 14, 2015 by Kori and Eileen

We finally decided on a place to eat! We settled on the Turtle Restaurant in downtown Brownwood. It only took 15-20 minutes to get here. We decided on this place since it had good reviews and seemed to have good food and some vegetarian options for Eileen.

I took some pictures inside of our food, and we just got through taking some more outside. The ambiance was calm. We had some issues getting Eileen’s vegetarian dish to actually be vegetarian, but it was cleared up without too much fuss. I had a fantastic steak. Probably one of the best I’ve ever had. Looks like there’s a wine tasting place next door to the restaurant, but we haven’t ventured over there.

As I was saying, we took a walk down the road here to see everything and get some cool pictures. The area feels very safe and is all around nice to look at. I took some pictures of Eileen walking around with my jacket on. Feels like we’re in the 1950s. Cool place. The night sky is even more amazing than what we see at home. I’ll get some pictures of that later.

But for now we need to get to the Hideout and go to bed! It’s been a really long day. We’re fairly tired. We’ve finally done it, we got married, we declared our love for each other to the world. It’s official now, we are one.

-Kori