Day 12 – “Lone Star State of Mind”

Austin City Limits

Today we spent a relaxing Sunday with Steve, who was down with Megan for a wedding yesterday and he was able to work from the Austin office on Monday, giving us the whole day together so we got to spend what was probably a typical Austin weekend day.  We drove out to Travis Lake to see the lake, then walked up to Mount Bonnell to get a good view of Austin (see photo) and the Colorado river which runs through town.  The river and surrounding area is a recreation center for the people of Austin and being a sunny day, everyone was taking advantage of the weather and there were a lot of kayaks out floating down the river.  We then went down to South Congress to do a bit of shopping  in the unique and more than slightly quirky stores there. 

Jeanne and John in a "Lone Star State of Mind"

We had dinner at The Salt Lick, which is roughly 20 miles outside of town.  It is “the” spot for barbecue in Austin but is quite different from la Barbecue where we ate yesterday.  While la Barbecue feels like eating in someone’s backyard, The Salt Lick is a Texas-sized restaurant with huge parking lot and maybe a thousand diners.  It was naturally more of an assembly line operation but the food was still very good.

Bats at Congress Avenue Bridge

To close the evening and keeping in the theme of “Keep Austin Weird”, we went to watch the bats under the Congress Avenue Bridge.  Every evening large crowds gather on the bridge at sunset to watch the millions of bats who hang under the bridge in the daytime take off for their evening flight to who knows where.  When they leave, they actually form a thin black cloud that you can see in the distance heading east from the bridge and thankfully away from the spectators.  It would have been really exciting if they went the other direction.