Try Allens Boots on South Congress Avenue; the area is often referred to by the trendy term SoCo and when you’re ready to kick up your boot heels, there are fun, funky and family-friendly places to shop and eat nearby.

My favorite is junky treasure-hunting at Uncommon Objects, with a chaser of Amy’s Ice Cream or Tex-Mex at Guero’s Taco Bar.

There’s a Round Rock branch of Allens about 15 miles north of Austin, which makes sense if you’re in that town for one of the many youth sports tournaments in the “Sports Capital of Texas.”

Besides that whoosh of leather smell when you walk in the door at Allens, they have hats, accessories and Western wear….but it’s mostly all about the boots, with names like Mad Dog Goat Roper and Old Gringo (or hand-tooled Lucchese if you want to drop big bucks.)

Be sure to look for a squarish toe box so those tootsies aren’t squooshed.  The pointy-toed boots look fashionable but, er, those boots aren’t really made for walkin’.

The Cattlemen’s Steakhouse in Fort Worth‘s historic Stockyards District is one of our favorites – the decor is Early Naugahyde, dress is pretty casual, the cooks work on grills right in the restaurant and the portions are massive.

Steaks and meats are not cheap (my favorite Heart o’ Texas 11 oz ribeye is about $30) but for fork-tender beefiness, it’s worth every cent.

Kids under 12 can get a top sirloin for $9. There are plenty of offerings besides steak – here’s the menu.

Get there early, especially on a weekend, because it’s a popular place.

The thought of camping with kids in the August heat in Texas is simply not appealing, unless we were to drive a bunch of hours out to someplace like Alpine in western Texas, where it is cooler in the evenings and there are neat places to go nearby….

• The McDonald Observatory for a Star Party
• Historic Fort Davis in the Texas Pecos Trail region
• Spring-fed swimming at Balmorhea State Park

We’ve always said to ourselves that we “ought to be more hikey and campy,” but we never get around to it.

Whether some consider it camping or not, I am perfectly happy to stay in park cabins like the ones in Bastrop State Park near Austin or Osage Hills State Park in Oklahoma, but the whole tent thing? Meh.

We’ve bought outdoor gear for kids in the past – items sized for them, that encourage bug-chasing, exploration, etc. – but it usually ends up at Goodwill.

Anyone out there want to try to get us motivated for camping, maybe in the fall?

I’ll be waiting over here in the air conditioning….

In it, I wrote about taking the kids to visit places that seem crummy, but really aren’t, and how you can’t have an opinion about seemingly crummy places unless you’ve been there yourself.

I wrote….

“Let’s take Lubbock, Texas, for example.

The city that Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings got the heck out of. Sights include, hmmm, the National Ranching Heritage Center (exhibits of spurs and bits!) and ummm, the American Wind Power Center (windmills!)

“Lubbock or Leave It,” sing the Dixie Chicks.

The legendary folk/country Texas vocal group the Flatlanders (Butch Hancock, Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore) didn’t name their group “Guys from a Nifty Place,” they named it “Flatlanders.” ‘Nuff said.

OK, so why am I whipping up on poor Lubbock? Because I just don’t think you can designate a place Yuckyville until you have physically been there to investigate.

Ergo, I need to travel to Lubbock before I can pop off about it.”

What was amazing about that post was that people showed up to leave comments on it about how much they liked Lubbock, including someone from the Buddy Holly Museum. I was touched and even more intrigued after that.

Well, I’m pumped to announce that my chance to investigate has finally arrived – I’ll be speaking with my Tourism Currents business partner Becky McCray in Lubbock, Texas on August 12 at the annual conference for TACVB (Texas Association of Convention and Visitor’s Bureaus.)

Our topic is blogger fam (familiarization) tours and press trips with today’s wired writers and content creators.

Before and after we speak, though, I get to explore Lubbock and its environs, plus check out what’s between Lubbock and the Austin area when I drive there (like a museum about women pilots during World War II who flew from Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas.)

Yes, I’m psyched to finally see Lubbock. Really.

Here’s an example of why they’re so handy….

I was speaking in Houston at the TFEA (Texas Festivals and Events Association) annual conference, and I needed a quick meal near the hotel.  It was a rather ritzy area – at one point I tweeted, “I’m looking for a Taco Bell in a Smith and Wollensky part of town” – but I did find a sandwich joint where I could run in and out and get something to go.

While parked, I checked in on both Gowalla and Foursquare, because I’m experimenting with them for my tourism-related clients. Both services use the GPS function on my T-Mobile Android smartphone to figure out where I am, and then show me nearby places that are listed in their database.

Both kept showing a nearby House of Pies.

Who wouldn’t want pie after a long drive and before a big speaking gig the next day?  Who has kids and spouses who like pie?

I rest my case.

Without the digital insights from Gowalla and Foursquare (and Yelp if I had launched that app, which also has a location-based function and checkins) I would not have noticed the neon-lit House of Pies building diagonally across the parking lot from me on Westheimer, a major Houston thoroughfare. There’s also a House of Pies on Houston’s Kirby Drive and they’re on Twitter as @HouseofPies1967.

One slice of their house specialty later, I was a fan of their Bayou Goo pie (a “pecan crust with a layer of sweet cream cheese, then a layer of vanilla custard swirled with chocolate chunks and topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings”) and even more of a fan of location-based services that bring me the information I need, when I need it, where I am located.

It’s hard to beat that convenience at 9 pm in an unfamiliar city, I’ll tell you!

Take a close look at privacy and notification settings before you use these; the default setting tends to be a public broadcasting of your location via Twitter, Facebook, etc. and you need to think through those implications. You can choose not to inform anyone when you check in, of course; Foursquare calls it “off the grid.”

If you have a smartphone, consider getting one of these free travel apps – I’m partial to Gowalla because it has a scavenger hunt aspect that kids will like, and lots of cool Trips for travel ideas. For more insights, here’s Gary Arndt’s post Gowalla vs Foursquare as tools for travel.

These services can really help with the “what’s around here?” question as you travel.

(This post was included in the 21 July edition of Wanderfood Wednesday. Check it out for other foodie posts!)

It’s a restaurant that looks all curvy and Art Deco but was really purpose-built and is quite modern in sensibility, including free WiFi and with a “non-Flash website for mobile and iPad devices.”

The menu is also modern, emphasizing fresh, organic and imaginative food that is often grown or sourced locally.

It’s more of a bistro sort of place than a diner, with fare like burgers and sandwiches at lunch, but also quiche and fresh fish.

The kid’s menu includes a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich; yum!

Standard Texas diner fare like chicken-fried steak is available later in the day, but also ribeye steaks, pan-fried pork chops and that very Southern fixture, the vegetable plate.

The cobblers, pies and other desserts are homemade, of course, and delish.

The interior is larger than it appears from the outside, and there are always lots of families there.

We had lunch to celebrate my daughter’s high school graduation, and although we had to wait a bit to get in, it was worth it.

The Monument was written up in Jane and Michael Stern’s Roadfood, and one visit will show you why.

It’s well worth a detour if you are in the area, for parents AND for kids.

I had to include this closeup photo of their raspberry lemonade, in case you have – like me – a sudden urge to take a swan dive into your icy drink on hot days.

Not that we have hot days in Texas, mind you….

The cafe is located at 500 South Austin Ave. From Interstate 35, exit University Ave. and go east 1 mile. Turn left on Austin Ave., head north a few blocks to 5th Street, and it’s on the left.

The phone number is 512-930-9586.  They are open from 7:00 am to 9:00 pm (until 10 pm on Fridays and Saturdays.)

(This post will be included in the fab Wanderfood Wednesday. Check it out!)

….stingrays have very soft little vacuum-cleaner mouths.

I know this because when SeaWorld San Antonio hosted a group of Texas-based bloggers this past week, they took many of us on one of their educational tours (available to any visitor) to see some of the working areas of the park.

One stop included a small tank of young stingrays, and boy, do they like to eat!

Here’s a two-minute video with me, my son and one of our blogger group (Kristi and her family from Frugally Thrifty) perfecting our stingray feeding techniques. It was like being brushed with a cotton boll when they sucked the fresh fish bits from between our fingers.

Nope, no one was poked by any barbed tails.

Thanks, SeaWorld San Antonio and the San Antonio CVB, for hosting us!

Here’s the direct link to the stingray video on YouTube, if you can’t see the video box below:

***  The research work of Dr. danah boyd (yes, she spells it lowercase) into social media usage of people in general, but especially teens.  She argued strongly that privacy is not dead, but you must take much more control of your privacy than you did before the ubiquitous Web.  My feeling is that parents must help in this area, but how many of them are tech-savvy enough to do so?

Here is a video excerpt from her opening keynote and here is a summary of her presentation on the excellent site ReadWriteWeb (with the so-true quote, “By and large, teenagers, according to Boyd, are more conscious about what they can gain by being public, while adults worry more about what they could lose.”)

***  The explosive growth of smartphones continues and will continue as more and more new models and services are offered (my own teen does not have one, but I can see the day coming – for now she works on her mad texting skillz.)   What does it mean when your kid has the Web in his/her pocket?

The biggest techy buzz out of “South by” this year was location-based games like Foursquare and Gowalla, where people can “check in” to different locations and collect virtual prizes for doing so.  The games are more addictive than you’d think (I play and I normally dislike games, and on Foursquare you don’t need a smartphone to play) but there are security implications to revealing your exact physical location to the whole planet, via the Web.

I strongly recommend talking about that with your tweens/teens before they jump into these services.

It’s a fabulous gathering but not exactly a hotbed of family travel information (unless you want to count my son going to the associated ScreenBurn video gaming event.)

If I was a more organized blogger I’d have things pre-posted and/or guest posts lined up for you….and that’ll happen right after those last Christmas decorations get put away at my house, right?

Right!

A good noise level to drown out the occasional squawking is a bonus.

I have a recommendation for you in Houston: Lupe Tortilla.

It’s a local chain of 8 restaurants, and I first heard about it when I wrote an article about Pro Stock drag racer Erica Enders (a Houston native and along with her sister, the subject of the Disney movie “Right on Track.”)  Erica loves Lupe Tortilla and they were a sponsor of her race car, so I thought I’d check them out on my next visit to town.

At the West Houston location, the place was packed at dinnertime on a Sunday, but the line moved quickly and hallelujah, there is a small outdoor playground that was mobbed with little patrons and their parents.

The food was good with a nice variety, the margarita came quickly and the noise level was enough of a din to cover squawking, but not so loud that you couldn’t carry on a conversation.

Houston being Houston, the restaurant is tucked next to a freeway (Interstate 10) and it took me awhile to find the right access road, but once I got in, life was good.

How can life not be good at a Tex-Mex joint on a weekend?

Pay Lupe Tortilla a visit.