Spring Break Road Trip Day 4: Round Rock, Austin, and Ellington

We all slept in but Riley slept a lot longer than the rest of us.  Leighton and I spent about an hour huddled in the tiny bathroom for light to play games and work on his US Presidents workbook while Roy snoozed some more.  Riley finally woke up and we got ourselves organized shortly before breakfast was over!  We then set out for our last day of the trip.  Riley was really sad it was the last day, and it was so cute!

We stopped in Round Rock for donuts at Round Rock Donuts.  I had come across it somehow and after seeing the giant Texas sized donut, I knew we HAD to go!  There was some traffic backup as we approached, and we thought it was the construction, but it was actually people getting in line for the drive thru!  The place was hopping!  And the donuts were great!  We will go here again for sure!

It was then just a short drive into Austin.  Our first stop was at Cuvee so Roy could try the cold brewed coffee there.  We had seen it on the show 'Daytripper' and were intrigued.  I lucked out and they also served mimosas, and the kids had fun taking pictures with my phone.

I had read about the Hope Gallery Graffiti Wall last fall and thought it would be a unique outdoor activity.  We met Kyle, Andy, Laila, and Gavin there.  It had been so long since we'd seen them, and it's crazy they've been back living in TX since the fall and it took this long to get together!  The kids really wanted to go up to the top, but at first it seemed too hard, but then we found a much easier route along the far edge.  It was a really fantastic view of the city and so neat to look at all the spray paint art.  It was really busy with people viewing and people painting.

When we came back down, a teenager offered his leftover spray paint can to the kids to try out.  So fun!  Someone else passed a second can to them at some point, as well.  And then we gave both our cans to another boy there with his mom before we left.

We had parked next to the most delicious smelling place ever - Bacon!  So, when we decided to grab some food to go eat at Zilker Park with Andy & Kyle and the kids (originally we planned to go to the Food Truck Park with the playground but figured a wide open space for football and soccer might be best), we stopped in there!  It smelled heavenly and there were bacon touches everywhere - the door handle was bacon shaped, the counter top looked like bacon, and they even had Bacon-opoly there!  While we waited for our food, I took the kids out back for some photos of more bacon - a stump, an American flag, and a big pink pig on the roof!

The drive to Zilker Park was a short distance but we were held up in a little SXSW traffic for a bit.  We passed a lot of food trucks by the park that we'd love to go try sometime and had remembered seeing when we were there a couple winters before.  We ate and played for a while before it was time to make one more drive - home.

On the way we stopped at Husk's in Ellington.  Kyla had suggested it as a good half way place with good food and clean bathrooms.  I had heard a couple friends talking about the amazing kolaches there, so we thought we'd give it a try.  I was far too full to eat anything, but Roy tried a kolache (he liked it and said we need to stop there again!) and the kids got some cookies.

We had fun keeping track of license plates we saw on the road.  Amazingly, we ended up seeing 28 states and 2 'extras': Ontario and Mexico!

And then the sun set on our as our trip came to an end.  It was such a fun trip.  We saw so many new places, and the kids were really great about all the driving.  We can't wait for our next trip!