2.28pm BST

Hello – or, howdy – and welcome to the first day of Guardian Travel’s reader-assisted road trip from Austin, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico. The premise of this trip is simple: I’ll go where you tell me. Just post your suggestions in the comments below, on Twitter using #Twitrips (or directly to me, @KatieRogers) or with our tool GuardianWitness.

Any and all ideas will be considered, but as I noted last week, this road trip is pretty ambitious – 1,030 miles in five days. Along with a photographer, Sarah Lim, and my boyfriend/our driver, John Chinoransky, I’ll have to be strategic about which recommendations to choose, but we’ll be sure to stay caffeinated, hydrated and sunblocked in order to cover as much of this stretch of the southwest as possible.

It’s Monday morning, and I’m off to grab a breakfast burrito at Juan in a Million on the city’s East side – thanks to @d_eklund for that suggestion. But I landed a day early to see as much as I could of Austin. My brother lives here, so, as one is accustomed to doing on road trips, I accepted a night of free lodging within the city limits. Here’s what reader-recommended activities I’ve been up to:

Sunday morning, it was a sunny 33C – early, cool summer, I’m told – so I decided to follow up on one of the very first reader recommendations I received for Austin: a trip to Barton Springs Pool. But first, I grabbed a $0.99 kolache from my brother’s local hole-in-the-wall bakery, Donut4U.

Katie Rogers (@katierogers) #twitrips breakfast: The humble $.99 kolache, beloved pig-in-a-blanketesque Austin breakfast staple pic.twitter.com/Pu9zFK5WrK

The Czech pastries are a simple creation: dough encasing sausage, cheese and jalapenos. But the humble kolache is a Texan breakfast staple, and they are delicious.

Post-kolache, it was off to Austin’s Zilker Park, home of the Austin City Limits Music festival and Barton Springs, a man-made, three-acre pool fed from water from a nearby spring of the same name. The pool is beautiful, tranquil … and the only place in the world where you’ll find a particular type of reptile, the Barton Springs salamander. Environmental protections went into effect shortly after the salamander’s discovery 20 years ago, which is why this pool literally feels more like a lake; at the deep end, the natural floor is covered in seaweed, and in the shallow end, bathers relax on algae-covered rocks.

I paid $5 to park and a $3 entry fee, the latter of which hasn’t changed in some time, a #TwiTrips reader tells me:

Alex Horton (@AlexHortonTX) @katierogers It's been $3 since I was swimming there as a kid in the 90s. Saw Quentin Tarantino once.

By Sunday afternoon, it was time for a late lunch and to check into our home for the night, Austin Motel. The motel is one of the most recognisable buildings in the trendy South Congress area, if not for its bright lights then for its slightly phallic shape:

Katie Rogers (@katierogers) Staying at the place affectionately dubbed "penis motel" by the locals #twitrips pic.twitter.com/H2smMwG5iV

For $150 a night and at the recommendation of @TWalk, we checked into a huge, clean room – nothing outwardly fancy about the decor, but the room was clean, bright and funky. More interesting is what’s outside: the motel office is full of weird touches and family photos, and the pool overlooks South Congress, which provides for quality people-watching.

Katie Rogers (@katierogers) In Austin Motel lobby, bonding with these two over not being able to spell Albuquerque until recently #twitrips pic.twitter.com/Oyi3ezOo1C

The immediate area offers nearly every type of dining option, from gourmet ice-cream to Japanese food ordered via iPad. But since #Twitrips reader @elizalive suggested grabbing food at South Congress Cafe, an upscale diner located nearby, I walked the few blocks to try the BBQ pork flank sandwich ($15).

Katie Rogers (@katierogers) #twitrips recommendation from @elizalive: South Congress Cafe. BBQ pork flank sandwich pic.twitter.com/zYZQRT2Trn

At sundown Sunday, word of mouth led me to Congress Avenue Bridge to watch the nightly flight of Austin’s humungous bat colony that takes place each year from March until November. It's popular - hundreds of people gather on a patch of land below the bridge to watch the 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats spiral up into the dusk.

You can also hire a riverboat or park a kayak to watch the bats from the water, but the view is just as nice from the top of the bridge, not to mention relatively guano-free.

Afterwards, I checked out Rainey Street, a local part of Austin’s downtown known for its relative lack of tourists and old cottage homes converted into trendy bars. At Lustre Pearl, there were beautiful, beachy interiors and some sort of Hula Hoop competition. At Blackheart, I found reasonably priced Moscow Mules and live music under bright red lights.

Katie Rogers (@katierogers) Rainey Street in Austin. Houses converted into bars. Awesome/pretty. pic.twitter.com/PJAWSDgNjn

Today, I’ll be wandering around east Austin and finding some decent BBQ, before departing for nearby Gruene to check out the oldest operating dancehall in the country, recommended early on by one of my Facebook connections. If you have any BBQ recommendations other than Salt Lick (outside of Austin and not exactly on the route) and Franklin’s (closed on Monday), please let me know!