This is the end. Really. Sort of.

By which I mean, I’m back in California. I’m done with the driving. My road trip is really, mostly over. I’m here, hanging out with my parents in Carlsbad until maybe the end of the week or so. I’m not really sure yet how long I’ll be here but when am I ever sure?

I got in last night a bit after 5 PM. Not bad considering I started the day in Tuscon. I took my time getting back, stopped at a National Park, wandered around petroglyphs, snapped pictures of sand dunes. And drove. A whole lot.

But not as much as I drove on Saturday. 13 1/2 hours. Austin, TX to Tuscon, AZ. How many miles is that? I lost track but I think it was somewhere around 900. Not a bad day’s work.

Austin is great BTW! I’d never been before. I wish it had been warmer, I really wanted to go kayaking, but as it was I had a nice time checking out the town. Went to a couple of bars, another strip club, a very cool movie theater, ate breakfast tacos.

Austin was an adventure for real. I left Lake Charles with no idea where, or with whom, I would be staying that night. I was assured by my (awesome) friend John that I would have a place but as for where…

A couple of his lady friends eventually agreed to split me for the two nights I’d be in town but when I actually got there and met up with them around 10 PM they were very well gone into the night and it would have been okay, but probably not ideal. I met them at a strip club BTW. It was awesome. I had a great time hanging out with them, they are super cool ladies, and then a bit after midnight we all made an effort to find me a place to sleep.

John has good friends, I must say. I mean how many people would say Yes when asked if a random stranger could crash with them that night? When it was already getting on 1 AM?

So I left the strip club and made my way to an excellent dive bar where I met another of John’s friends. Had a beer, chatted with some UT grad students, and then proceeded to stay up until 4:30 am on John’s friend’s couch chatting about whatever.

It was great!

In conclusion, I want to go to SXSW. Like, a lot.

And that’s it. I have nowhere else to drive to except for home. It’s been over 3 months on the road, somewhere around 15,000 miles covered, a lot of cities and friends visited, beers consumed, things seen.

Somewhere in there, before Austin, I also drove along the Louisiana gulf coast, through wetlands, saw another couple of alligators, and got a ton of mosquito bites.

Getting back to real life is gonna be fun…

Not writing in the notebook every day is going to be weird. I think I’m going to continue it for the next few days, until my subletter is gone and I’m officially going back home to LA.

I’m also going to catch up on picture uploading! I’m only a month behind… Um. Oops?

So yeah. Here it is. The last of the road notebooks. Pictures on the flickr to come soon.

And stuff. Other stuff. I don’t know. Stuff.