A Day in Austin
/We were so close to Texas’ state capital city that we couldn’t leave without at least paying Austin a visit. Other than short business trips years ago, neither of us had ever spent time in Austin and we looked forward to seeing at least a little bit of the city.
I’d done some research and we’d whittled down the list of possible sights. The Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center at UT/Austin came highly recommended and we headed there first. As the state botanical garden and arboretum, the center highlights more than 900 species of native Texas plants in both garden and natural settings.
First Lady Lady Bird Johnson
The park boasts 279 acres of gardens, woodlands, and savannas demonstrating the diversity of Texas native plants. We’d been seeing so many wildflowers in bloom on our travels, it was interesting to see them at the center and learn a bit more about them.
In actuality, we saw more wildflowers blooming in the wild than we did at the wildflower center. Perhaps it was still a bit early for some of the more showy flowers to bloom. Nonetheless, we enjoyed our visit and we did see a couple of new wildflowers we hadn’t seen before.
We were both keen to check out some of the many murals and street art that the city trumpets. Austin’s unofficial slogan Keep Austin Weird promised to offer some interesting sights. Though we weren’t far from downtown, it seemed to take forever to get there. Austin appears to be a modern, vibrant city, but the traffic is horrendous… even midday midweek. We finally got off the highway and stopped first at the downtown Visitors Center. Parking was at a premium. At the VC, we looked for a self-guided tour of the many murals we’d read about. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one, so based on what I’d read, we cobbled together a walking tour of our own to see some of the downtown and hunt for downtown murals. We planned to drive to SoCo (South Congress St) for more.
During our downtown scavenger hunt, we passed in front of the state capitol building. A little trivia… Texas’ state capitol building is the second largest in the country, second only to the US Capitol building in Washington, DC.
Austin has a modern light rail system known as the MetroRail with 32 miles of track to get you where you want to go. We walked everywhere! But we saw trains running frequently.
Between downtown murals and SoCo, we managed to see lots of murals. SoCo was much more our style though. Take a look at what Keep Austin Weird in the mural department has to offer. Some titles are evident, others need a little explaining.
Keep Austin Weird is evident in some of the city’s unique celebrations and unusual pastimes like an annual Eeyore’s Birthday Party, the Weird Home Tour and Quesoff (“queso”…all things melted cheese festival). Then there’s goat yoga (you do yoga while goats walk on you) and Chicken Sh*t Bingo at the Little Longhorn Saloon (you bet on which number the chicken will poop on a giant plywood bingo board).
The Jurassic Car (And Pet) Wash (get your car and/or pet washed while “in the presence of animatronic dinosaurs”). Then there’s the seasonal Mexican free-tailed bat flight from under the Congress Avenue Bridge every evening at dusk. Austin has the largest urban bat population in North America.
Yes, we missed all of these exciting options and so much more, so I guess we’ll need to come back. Only so many weird things you can do in a day. On second thought though, I think we’ll skip the goat yoga.
Next time, we’re off to Garner State Park and the Rio Frio and lots of whining and whinging along the way.