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.