Zilker Park, Austin TX (11-22-12)

I think it will take about a dozen trips to Austin for us to see it all, at the rate we're going.  With this visit we learned that yes, Thanksgiving IS a holiday and we should have made a reservation.  On the plus side, we ended up staying at a COE park, (Army Corp of Engineers), right on Lake Georgetown. Corp parks are pretty nice, with huge sites, usually on the water. This one had the bonus of a 24 mile hiking trail and non-specific site reservation, which meant as long as they aren't completely booked, we can add days at the last minute if we want to do so. The negative is that the gate locks at 10 pm, so we weren't able to sample the Austin  night life.

the last time we were here I wanted to visit the Umlauf Sculpture Garden. Umlauf was well known art teacher at the University of Texas, and the garden sounded intriguing. Unfortunately it rained the last time we were here, so we missed it. 

This time I discovered that it was part of the huge metropolitan park called Zilker Park, so we decided to take a day and explore the whole thing.

  I have to say that for me, the Umlauf sculptures were a let down. Not that they weren't interesting- they were, but we had to pay for the privilege of viewing them, and since we are not the type to sit on the little benches and contemplate each statue for an hour or so, we were done with the garden in about 20 minutes.

My favorite part of the park was the Barton Springs Pool. The pool is fed by Barton Spring, at the rate of 32 million gallons a day, and the water temperature is a constant 72 degrees.  If we had had our suits, we would have gone for a swim for sure!

We took the walking trail around the perimeter of the park, amazed at how many people were out, enjoying the great weather at this park, in the middle of a large city.

Bypassing the "leash-free" portion of the park,  we soon came upon the botanical garden,  where they once again wanted our money. This time we forked over $2 each with less reluctance, hoping, that with the multitudes of "sub-gardens", we'd get our money's worth. I do love Japanese Tea Gardens!  This one was a little overgrown and would have been better in season, but it was still a nice walk.

The Butterfly garden was the best, and reminded me of the days when I would sit in our backyard at our house in Michigan, camera in hand, waiting for the butterflies and hummingbirds to show up.

These pictures are ones that I took in our backyard in Michigan:

 

We decided at the last minute to change our minds and buy a turkey
to cook for Thanksgiving. And yes, our oven fits an 18 lb turkey.  We hiked in the morning, feasted on turkey and pie  in the afternoon, and watched the Patriots demolish the Jets in the evening.  

                                                         All in all, a great day.

Austin, TX…sort of. (12-4-11)

   The day we arrived in Austin we drove around the city,  I actually like it quite a bit.  It’s bigger than the usual size town that we like, but it isn’t overwhelmingly large.  Its not to difficult to navigate and has “neighborhoods” that each seem to have their own character.  Along the way we saw signs pointing out which way to go to get to different attractions.  One of them said “Umlauf”.  After spending a few minutes trying to guess what it could mean (our best guesses were college campuses?) I googled it, and it turns out its a garden of sculptures.  Reading about it really peaked my interest and I was looking forward to going there.
   After getting the “layout of the land” we made a list of things we wanted to do or see in the 4 days we were going to be here.   And that’s about as far as we got on that list.  We did make it to one museum- The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.  I have an uncle named Bob Bullock, so I was really curious to see it. Having spent a fair amount of time in different parts of Texas now, we are beginning to get a real sense of the history of the state, and this museum helped quite a bit with that endeavor. I learned about the 9 or so years (1836-1845) that Texas was actually an independent republic (the Lone Star Republic),  recognized by the United States, Britain and France, after winning its independence from Mexico, but before it was accepted into the United States.     
      So what stopped us from doing everything we wanted to do? The weather.  It turned cold.  Really cold. And the wind blew.  And it rained. So we stayed in, mostly.  We got out the Christmas decorations and put them up, and realized we don’t have enough (but then, Paul always wants more decorations!). We didn’t put the ornaments on the tree yet.  We’ll be moving a few more times before we settle for Christmas, and then we’ll put up the ornaments. At some point we spent 2 hours calling AT&T stores to find out if they have any Iphones in stock and when they all said no, we headed to the local Apple store to get Paul an Iphone.  He’s only had it 2 days but so far he really loves it.  Of course, anything would be an improvement over his 7 year old flip phone with the screen that is impossible to see.  We are moving forward at light speed in the technology department!  In addition to my Ipad data plan, Paul’s Iphone can be a hotspot that will run the computer and the Ipad. In fact, I am using it to post this because the campground Wi-fi doesn’t work. More and more often we come across campgrounds whose Wi-Fi is either spotty or non-existent.

     We braved the cold to eat at a BBQ restaurant called the Salt Lick.  You can see the huge pit that was just full of sausage, brisket, and turkey.  The place was enormous, although not very busy the day we were there.  The tables are mostly picnic tables and they serve no alcohol, but they have a winery and a store onsite so you can buy whatever you want and bring it to dinner with you. Since it was early in the day, we just had diet coke. 
So, we’ve already left Austin, after having done very little exploring, and are now in Fredericksburg TX.