Stop #1: San Marcos, TX

Yay!! We made it to our first stop: San Marcos, Texas. Home to the Texas State University Bobcats. Levi and I both attended Montana State University where we too were Bobcats, so we have that in our blood already.

This is so exciting. Planning over the last month for this adventure has felt more like a fairy tale, than actually planning a real deal. So this moment is pretty surreal, we are actually doing this. Here we go!

I reached out to the Chamber of Commerce and Tourism office before arriving in San Marcos. They were AMAZING!!

I got a full page email back from the office of tourism addressing all San Marcos has to offer that was bullet for bullet what we have listed in our criteria, as well as ideas of must see things while we were in town: children’s park, searching for the 10 mermaid sculptures around town (we found at least 6), and several more that we simply ran out of time to do.

Samantha with the Chamber of Commerce also went above and beyond. She arranged a meeting with herself and the Executive Director of Communications with the CISD where we toured a school for Henry. The kiddos loved running around the gym shaking maracas and checking out the books in the most inviting little library I have ever seen. Samantha also offered us insight into great employment options. She explained that Amazon opened a fulfillment center about 2 years ago in San Marcos, and they are a great company for the community, partnering largely with the schools and offering a huge employment platform. Samantha is a gem, and I am pretty sure she would be my first friend if we moved to the area!

People are SUPER friendly. We ate lunch @ Café on the Square. The staff was so welcoming, giving us insight into schools and making us feel like one of the regulars. We sat right up at the counter and the chef noticing Henry’s Mickey Mouse hat, brought him out a special Mickey Mouse pancake.

The San Marcos river runs right thru town. Passing over a bridge while driving around TSU campus we noticed people floating, swimming, and sunbathing in the clear river below. I looked at Levi and said, “Should we?” We pulled over, changed into our suits, and jumped into the river in minutes. OMG refreshing, and especially relaxing for Levi who had just loaded our entire house in to Pods and driven our little family 5 hours to this town.

It doesn’t take long to get anywhere! It never failed every time we put a location into Google Maps we were less then 5 miles away.

Although landlocked it is home to 10 mermaids, 6 of which we spotted around town.

Well to be honest this place is going to be hard to beat, other than the heat! It was 102 heat index the day we were out and about exploring. San Marcos was a wonderful town to start our journey and is 100% a contender on our list!