My favorite coffee shop

There isn’t a lot in Dripping Springs, TX, but that’s where I landed. The hill country is absolutely beautiful, and the main street in downtown drip has a bunch of cute small businesses. My favorite place is Mazamas-I used to go there with friends a lot when we were in high school, but we’ll still drive into Drip just for the nostalgia. The coffee and bakery at Mazamas is great, but the atmosphere makes it my favorite. It feels like you’re out in the country (maybe with a latte and some banana bread haha). All they’re missing are actual baby goats.

I recommend Mazamas to everyone who tells me they’re visiting Dripping Springs. Whenever I check back too, I hear the visit to this coffee shop was a wonderful one :)

Ozark Mountains

This was the first roadtrip I’ve ever taken by myself! 10 hours to Huntsville, AR. Crazy enough, I actually ended up staying in the SAME MOTEL that I had been to YEARS before when I initially drove down to Texas moving from Illinois. It definitely felt like God was telling me that I was taken care of before, so I would be taken care of on that trip too. (It was the Madison Motel, the owners were super sweet and helpful!)

I met some of my friends there and we hiked the Lost Valley Trail along the Buffalo National River and Whittaker Point Trail up in the mountains. Download the Google Maps to your trailheads haha. Absolutely no internet and very bad radio connections. We still had fun trying to find a country station that wasn’t total static.

Whittaker Point was GORGEOUS. We could see so far out into the mountains, and we were completely immersed in the most beautiful tall, green trees. We definitely don’t have trees like that in Texas, and I didn’t realize how much I missed forests like that. I loved going out onto rock ledges just to take in God’s incredible creation. Definitely got as close to the edges as I could without falling off—hadn’t felt so small and free in a long time.