Thunder cracked outside the window, jolting me out of my seat. We both raced outside to watch the storm, hoping to get some good footage on my phone. Flashes filled the night sky as we watched in wonder. Then an explosive crack made me jump, swear, and run back inside. I’d never heard thunder so loud.

Then the rain came. We tried to venture outside again, to watch and film. I opened the front door and stepped back as a raging waterfall had sprouted over the eaves. “I’m not going out in that,” Mike said.

We scurried back inside, but we weren’t the only ones. A spider ran across the lounge floor, heading to the bedroom. I almost stomped on it, but decided instead to capture it in a glass, not wanting to deal with spider gunk all over the floor.

I pleaded for Mike to kill it, but he did the humane thing and took It outside and set it free. “It better not come back in here!” I said.

Later on that evening, as we were watching TV, something by the front door caught Mike’s eye. 

“What?” I said, my spider and scorpion radar on full alert.

“I’m hoping it’s just a spot on the mat,” he replied.

My radar peaked. There was no spot there earlier. I jumped up to have a look. 

“It’s a giant beetle,” Mike said. He headed over with his glass to trap it, and I followed close behind.

“That’s not a beetle,” I said.

The giant cockroach sat silently on the mat, like a stone or a small rock. But don’t let looks deceive you, this thing was a nightmare.

Mike tried to cover it with the glass, but the thing ran at his feet. Mike danced on his tippy-toes trying to dodge the critter and I’m sure I heard a little squeal.

He chased after it, backwards and forwards, but this thing was fast.

I grabbed the glass from Mike, thinking I could do better. It scuttled under a towel I’d placed by the door and hid. I picked up the towel, and it darted out, giving me a fright. I screamed and plonked the glass down, but missed. Dammit.

Then it ran into the cupboard. I tried capturing it as it scurried back and forth, but this thing moved at lightning speed. It would give Usain Bolt a good run for his money. 

It fled the cupboard, and I screamed again as it brushed my foot and made a bee-line for Mike’s shoe. I flicked his shoe out of the way, then it started running for my shoe. This time I panicked. There was no way I was going to capture this supersonic creature, and nor was I letting it in my shoe, so I did the only option left to me.

The sickening crunch below my jandal told me I had won. It had its chance, but now it was no longer. I looked down at the flattened mess, feeling no remorse.

I placed the glass over him and said, “Gotcha.”

One advantage of getting up at 6am to walk the dog, we can get out before it gets too hot. Although it already is too hot.

Today we visited some small towns in Texas. First stop, was the Paige Farmhouse and Diner for breakfast at 7.30am. It’s actually a wedding venue but they are also open for meals. I had my usual biscuits and gravy with a side of bacon, and Mike had bacon, eggs, and some hash. No, not that sort of hash, Marijuana is still illegal in Texas. It was a potato hash, and was delicious.

After our breakfast we visited the town of Paige, but it was very small with a population of about 500. But… we were glad we did as a family of Armadillos crossed the road in front of us. They are a weird dinasour looking creature with their beady little eyes, long pointed snout, and that freaky shell of overlapping scales. Amongst my excitement I got tangled up in all my cameras trying to take a photo, but thankfully they hung around long enough for me to capture them on film.

After Paige, we visited La Grange, famous for its Koloches and Klobasneks. More about them in a minute. La Grange was also famous for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas which the movie was based on. There’s that shack outside La Grange, that the famous ZZ-top song was based on. 

La Grange was inhabited by the Czechs who settled in the mid 1800s. This is why there are foods we have never heard of, like Koloches and Klobasneks.

Out first stop was Lukas bakery to see what their Klobasneks looked like. We walked into the bakery but we couldn’t see any on display. We were about to walk out, when a customer stops us.

“You can’t leave without tryin’ the Pigs,” she said.

“We couldn’t see any on display”, we said.

“That’s cos they need to be heated up.” She turns to the lady behind the counter. “Get these people two pigs, on me.”

We both said that was unnecessary, but she insisted, and handed us a bag of ‘two pigs.’

We thanked her very much, and took our treasure to the park to see what was in the bag.

Mike pulls out his ‘pig’ and shows it to me. It was similar to a sausage roll, but in a crispy bread rather than pastry. The Czech name for them is Klobasneks or ‘pigs in blankets.’ Certainly different to our version.

They were quite nice, but I wouldn’t write home about it. Although I am currently writing home about it, so… But I’d prefer a sausage roll any day.

Our next stop was to a settlement of a Czech family to the area which was really interesting. I’ll mention more of this on my vlogs, but we took a stroll in the heat, taking in the stunning views over Texas.

Our next stop was Weikels bakery, famous for its Koloches. These are a sweet treat, kind of like a cake with fruit. It looked similar to a Danish, but instead of pastry, it was soft and fluffy cake moulded around some fruit, or cream cheese. The taste was similar to a donut. Mike chose the lemon curd, and I chose the apricot.

For seconds I chose the cream cheese and Mike chose the peach

My favourite was the cream cheese, Mike’s was the lemon curd. They were so delicious and I’m glad it’s a 30 minute drive to get these otherwise I’d be eating them all day!

A Bard Joke:

Why did the armadillo cross the road? 

To get to the shell station.

The alarm chimes in my ear, jolting me awake. It’s 6am, time to get up and walk the dog.

In my comatose state I put on my clothes, remembering to shake them out first. In the lounge the cat is saying hello. It’s not a meow, he is actually talking, a clear and precise hello.

The air conditioning has been running all night and the house is cool, verging on cold. But as I step outside the heat hits, wrapping itself around me, seeping into every pore, and it’s not even daylight yet!

The angry dogs at the end of our driveway await. My chest tightens as I wonder if this will be the day the brown dog breaks through the fence and comes for us. It’s happened before, it’s only a matter of time before it happens again. And sometimes the owners get sloppy and leave the gate open.

But this time, we’re ready. Armed with pepper spray, air spray, a hooter and an umbrella we walk towards them, quietly so as not to alert them to our presence. 

But it’s no use. The brown dog is already barking angrily at us. Mike has Tootsie on a lead, and walks her quickly past. Once we’re past their section, we know the dog won’t try to escape, so we feel safe… for now. We still have to walk back past them.

It’s random which dogs decide to join us for our morning walk. The last few mornings, the husky has been joining us. I don’t like him to come near me because he’s always itching and scratching. Apart from his evil eyes and annoying habits, he seems like a pleasant chap. But he didn’t join us today, but the little terrier did. 

We have contacted another auto shop about Rodger’s air conditioning and he has managed to source a part for us. Assuming it fits okay, he will install it for us next week. I’ve always thought Americans were lazy for driving everywhere, but I’ve figured out it’s just too hot to walk anywhere. It has been 40 degrees and humid during the day, and not dropping below 30 degrees at night, so crazy weather. And this is why we’ve decided to get our air conditioning fixed.

We went into Austin on Sunday, and it’s a nice city, modern, but not too big. We drove past the sleek skyline and into the centre, thankful there was no traffic on a Sunday morning. We parked right opposite the Capitol building (free to park on Sundays) and had a look inside.

The large domed building loomed in front of us and I snapped a few photos. It was free to visit, but they scanned all our stuff on the way in, and it was like going through security in an airport. We had a browse around, impressed as I’d never been in a Capitol building before. But you’ll see it when the video comes out.

Austin looks like a very livable city, reminding me of Melbourne. We headed to the shops and restaurants in SOCO, short for South Congress. We had tacos for brunch, but neither of us were impressed, which is a shame as Texas is known for their Mexican food. We must have chosen the wrong place. But the place had a cool vibe so that was something.

We’ve had a steady stream of stuff arriving from Amazon. Mike has ordered solar panels and is in the process of wiring them up ready to mount on the roof. But it’s so frikking hot, he really can’t work for too long out there. I’m still trawling through footage and putting videos together.

At 9pm, we take Tootsie out for her final wee of the day and the fireflies are always out at this time. They’re like little sparks of light, flittering about the garden. They are really neat.

Last night I fell asleep to the sound of gunfire and dogs barking. The gunfire was a distance away so didn’t bother me so much, the dogs barking were next door.

There’s some good news and some bad news today. We’ll start with the bad news.

The compressor on the vans air conditioner has broken and they can’t find a replacement part. And even if we manage to find a replacement, it’s going to cost at least $500 in labour to fix.

The good news is, they didn’t charge us to tell us this. Also, we’ve not seen any more scorpions.

I am slowly trawling through all my footage trying to make it into videos. Mike is slowly making progress on the van. He’s putting some curtains up and fixed all the doors that keep swinging open while we are driving. Kevin fell over in the heat and his nose fell off, so Mike has fixed that. You’ll meet Kevin soon in our videos.

We still need to mount some solar panels, and also cover our toilet with something as it’s creepy preparing food so close to the loo, especially since it started smelling. I really want to put a composting toilet in, but they are ridiculously expensive. So we went to Home Depot, the US equivalent to Bunnings, and bought the bits and pieces we need to make a table over the loo. I also bought some spider and scorpion spray and tomorrow we will give our van a really good spray while we’re not living in it.

Everyone down South calls me Ma’am and I really don’t like it. At first I hated it so much I almost asked someone to stop calling me that. But I’m getting used to it now, and have downgraded from hating it to not liking it. But, it’s how they do things down south. Mike gets called Sir. I think he quite likes it.

The cleaner comes tomorrow morning, so tonight will be spent cleaning the house before the cleaner gets here.

The alarm goes off at 6am, and we take Tootsie for a walk, just a slow amble around the block. We are usually accompanied by other dogs. A little terrier, almost always comes with us. She’s a little character and struts along like she owns the place, so confident for something so small. She likes to wind up the other dogs in the neighbourhood who are stuck behind their fences. Another dog which often comes along is a husky, but we haven’t seen him for a few days.

It’s an interesting neighbourhood. It’s in Camp Swift which was an army base during WW2. The people living here are mostly Mexicans, and Jane refers to herself as the “old white lady.” Most of the houses have an eclectic mix of knick-knacks adorning their front porches, and a jumble of cars out the front. Chickens and roosters run free, clucking and crowing, and every house has a few dogs.

There is a “NO TRESPASSING” sign on each house. I asked Jane why they have a need to say that, I mean, in NZ we know not to trespass. But apparently the police won’t do anything about intruders in your back yard if you don’t display this sign. So that kinda makes sense.

As we walk around the block, a stark building surrounded by a barbed wire fence is on our right. We both assumed it was an army base, but it’s not… It’s a prison!

We walk alongside it, a security car patrolling up and down. All is quiet in the prison at 6am, but later in the day we can see the prisoners out playing sports. Sometimes baseball, or tennis. Jane refers to it as a prison resort.

After our walk, we have our breakfast. This morning we had to drop our van off in town to get the air-conditioning fixed. I took Janes car and it was my first time driving in America. It was ok, just weird making sure I was sat in the right place on the road. I found I tended to keep to the edge too much, but used my mirrors to centre myself.

After dropping the van off, we took a stroll along the river, which was very nice. Lots of other people making the most of the cool morning to get their exercise in.

Bastrop is a quaint little town, and we’ll do a vlog on it at some point. We saw an orange jeep in the Main Street with a kiwi on it, and Aotearoa written on the side. It’s nice to know we’re not the only kiwis here.

Today we saw a racoon. Thankfully it didn’t come too close to the house, but the cats decided to check it out. You don’t want to get too close to one, as they carry rabies.

To think I was scared of ticks, when a freaking scorpion just scurried across the kitchen floor. Thankfully Mike noticed it, put a glass over it, then slid some cardboard underneath and took it outside. I told him to kill it, but he didn’t want to. Hope it doesn’t come back in.

But now I’m worried. Are his family here somewhere? Are they going to crawl into bed with me? Holy crap, I knew Texas had scary things but I didn’t expect them in the house!

So, as well as ticks, we need to beware of scorpions, loose dogs, gun wielding people, snakes, it’s terrifying! As well as that, I’m covered in mozzie bites and they just don’t stop itching!

On the positive side, Mike has fixed the windscreen wipers and is in the process of fixing the rear vision mirror. We are still waiting to get the airconditioning fixed, hopefully tomorrow.

The waste tank in our van was starting to smell really bad, so we managed to find somewhere to dump it. It’s not like NZ where dump stations are free. But we found a campground and It was only $5 to dump. It still smells though, so we might have to get some de-odouriser for it.

The dog has a bladder infection, so Is on antibiotics. The only way she will take her pills is smashed up in some cat food. I’m actually hoping the scorpion came in on the dog and it’s a once-off thing. The thought of an infestation terrifies me.

The weather has cooled down to 30 degrees which has been quite nice, but it’s going up to 40 degrees on Thursday for a few days. Hope we get our airconditioner fixed before then!

Today we bought some bikes! We found a couple of cheapish bikes we liked and bought a bike rack for the van, and are looking forward to doing some cycling. Except there are a lot of loose dogs around this area, so we might need to drive somewhere to use them.

The vans air-conditioning packed up today. I think it’s quite common in the hot weather, but a pain for sure. Just hope it can be fixed and doesn’t cost too much.

Jane treated us to dinner. We went to a BBQ place and it was so delicious. The smoked brisket was something I have never had and it was soooo good. They smoke it for around 12 hours and it just melted in my mouth, and oh so tasty. I also had lamb ribs which were also delicious, and sides of potato salad and Mac n cheese. Mike had the pork ribs, but they weren’t like the ribs we’d get at home. The pork was smoked and tasted more like a ham. I didn’t like it.

Jane leaves to go to France on Sunday, so we are driving her to Austin airport. We might have a look around Austin while we are there.

We arrived at our housesit and met Jane, our housesit host. We’re staying in a 2 bedroom house that’s been recently renovated, and the most important thing is, it has air-conditioning. We are on 1 acre of property so quite private, although there are other houses around.

We are looking after a 15 year old Rottweiler called Tootsie, and two cats which are still scared of us. Our job is to walk Tootsie at 6am in the morning, and basically just feed the animals.

Jane said one thing to be aware of, is that in Texas, most people carry guns. So every now and then we might hear gunshot around the place, but it’s usually people in their backyards just firing their guns. Still, a scary thought.

Jane doesn’t go away until Sunday, but has let us camp here and to get used to the animals before she goes.

Mike is working on our van, with a list of things to fix, while I am trawling through all my footage and trying to make videos out of it.

After a long days driving, we finally made it to Bastrop, Texas. We pulled into the state park, about 7 miles from our housesit. The camp office was closed, so we chose a spot with full hookup (water, power and sewer) This place is really good value for $35 per night.

It is fricking hot in Texas, so we cranked up the air-conditioner.

The next day we both woke up feeling really crappy, but we dragged ourselves out of bed at 7am and went for a walk, the plan to avoid walking in the heat. But it was too late, by 7.30am it was already stinking hot.

We did a short 30 minute walk from the camp and lots of spiderwebs crossed our path. We also saw some poos on the side of the path which we thought might be bear, but it was more likely bobcat. We got back to the van and Mike tried to unlock the doors using the central locking, but they didn’t unlock.

“Shit,” he said. “I think we got a flat battery.”

Turns out the previous evening after the long drive, Mike forgot to flick the switch to disconnect the battery. I should have double checked him.

We thought, no big deal, we’re in a campground, lots of people about to jump start us. But after negotiating with Paul, he advised against jumpstarting a completely flat battery. (sparks and explosions were mentioned). Instead, he suggested swapping our house battery with the engine battery. Then we could charge the engine battery off the converter/charger that charges the house battery.

Mike put the house battery into the engine, and the car started. Yippee! But there was another problem. The converter/charger connectors did not fit on the engine battery. But no problem, a short trip to auto zone to buy more parts fixed this.

The rest of the day I spent sheltering inside the van with airconditioning going, and catching up on some editing. It was a nice rest day.

Tomorrow we meet our housesit host and camp out at her place for a few days until she leaves for Europe.

Having arrived at the carpark late the previous evening, we had no idea what was in the area. As we left and continued our drive up the coast, the beaches were stunning white sand. And at 10am, nobody was about. Had we known It was so beautiful we would have left earlier and had breakfast at the beach instead of a crappy carpark.

If we took the interstates (motorways) to Texas, we could be there in 8 hours. Mike prefers to drive off the motorways so our travel time Is just over 10 hours, but in places it’s way more picturesque.

We were cruising along nicely, when we saw a road closed sign ahead. Mike wanted to ignore it, god knows why, but I made him turn around. Next thing we know, we’re Google is navigating us to a Space station. We drove up to the barriers and the guard carrying a gun told us we couldn’t go that way. I worried he might pull his gun and tell us we had five seconds to get outta town.

But he didn’t. We told him we were lost and he was very helpful. He explained there was no way we could avoid the interstate for this section. So for the first time on this trip, we drove on the interstate.

Things move much faster on the interstate, lots of trucks, people tailgating each other. We much prefer the slower pace. So we drove on it for about 30 minutes, then exited onto the minor roads again.

We basically drove all day. There would have been plenty to see, but we bypassed New Orleans and all the tourist places. It’s stinking hot here and humid as hell, and there are just so many people out and about for the long weekend. So we’re sticking to our plan to fast-track it, but on the slow roads, to Texas.

We stopped at about 4.30pm at an RV park resort. Sounds flash, but it’s just a bunch of RV’s parked and there is a pool and a casino. But we have water, electricity and sewer right at our camp, so we’re all hooked up.

We fired our rear airconditioner up, and after about 30 mins the van had cooled down nicely and I had an afternoon nap. Then we had corn chips and home made guacamole, followed by a salad wrap for dinner.