Trip 5: Day 23 (The Woodlands & Austin)

Church on FM 1488 near Magnolia

 The day started early with a 15-mile drive to Westfield (unincorporated, census-designated place near I-45/FM 1960) to take my step-mom's Lexus SUV to have its oil changed. Changing the oil on a Lexus is not as simple as going down to the nearest Jiffy Lube and filling it with 10W/30. No, the Lexus is picky in that its filled with synthetic oil, costing more than double, but lasting more than twice as long.

FM 1488 west of Magnolia

 Past that, it was a fairly domestic day of sitting around and watching TV, which was nice after the somewhat rough morning. About 5:45, I left for Austin, driving first to a restaurant that I know for having really good fried shrimp, which is one of those things that I have to get while in Houston. Fried shrimp is just not the same anywhere else. But I ended up loving their boudin more than the fried shrimp. If you're unfamiliar with boudin, look it up, because you don't see it very often, but I feel like this may be the next new hipster food item that you see in restaurants in Los Angeles. Modern American boudin, however, is different from its blood sausage French cousin, and is now considered to be the "Cajun" variety, though Cajuns of years ago definitely ate the blood sausage type.
 The drive was so, so pretty. Not only the nice sunset that I received but, randomly, I got treated to an amazing display of wildflowers. In past years, I've seen small fields of bluebonnets in the highway medians. People would often cross interstate lanes on I-35 in order to photograph and walk through these fields (don't pick them, because that's illegal and well enforced in Texas). But, this time, they were everywhere.

Sunset on US 290 near Brenham

As I got to Brenham, fields off of the highway were solids of blue (bluebonnets) and orange (Indian paintbrush). The municipal utility district (MUD) headquarters in Brenham was the best display, out of all of them, but there were fields all along the highway up to when it went dark.

Flowers along US 290 (the blue and orange)

Flowers along US 290 (the blue)