Everything is Bigger in Texas

Welcome to Texas!

The first day in Texas was great! We started by going to the Lyndon B Johnson Presidential Library and Museum. It is very infomative about his life, family, and presidency. We toured it for a couple hours.

After lunch, we visited the capitol building. They are right.. everything is bigger in Texas! This building was IMMENSE and beautiful. The stone building sits in the middle of a large, grassy park. The dome gleams in the sun and a goddess is perched on the very top of the building, holding a Texas star.

Next, we went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wild Flower Center. What a dissappointment! I thought there would be actual FLOWERS there! Nope.. everything was dead. It must be better in the spring, but in the heat of summer, most of the ground was covered with dead flowers and dirt.

We then went back to McKinney Falls State Park to have dinner. A little about this.. when we arrived, we thought we were going to be tent camping, however, we had accidently signed up for a shelter. This was a blessing in disguise. Our shelter was a two room structure with lights, electricity, a picnic table inside and out, a sink, and bunks to fit up to 8 people. It also had something that Jim and I really cherished during the hot nights-- a ceiling fan.

We ended the day with BATS! Under the Congress Street Bridge in Austin lives the largest bat community in North America. I'm talking about over 1 and 1/2 million bats! Jim and I sat at a small park at the bottom of the bridge and settled in with the other bat watchers. At about 8:30PM the bats began swarming out of the bridge and flying into the night. It was amazing! I put a video of it in the video section of the blog so that you too can check it out!

On day 2,

We went to Barton Springs Pool to cool off in the morning. Barton Springs Pool is a natural spring that forms a large inground pool. The water is clean and cool. I wish I brought goggles because, since it was all natural, the deep parts were covered with plants and small fish. VERY COOL!

Next we went to the mother ship of Whole Foods Market for lunch. What I loved about this was the collection of people here for lunch. There are businessmen, painters, construction workers, kids, teens, government people, tourists... it was definitely a melting pot of people. The selection of food was unbelievable at this Whole Foods. You could choose from: sandwiches, pizza, calzones, greek food, american food, smoothies, hamburgers, hot dogs, salad bar, breakfast bar, lasagna bar, desserts galore and more! Jim and I shoveled food into our cardboard containers and ate away! YUM!

After this we went to the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas. It was a nice visit and we saw works from some great artists.


Final Day:

We started the day off by taking a quick ride to New Braunfels, TX (south of Austin) to tube on the Guadalupe River. It was the most perfect day to do this. The sun was out and it was HOT! Jim and I rented two tubes and floated for 2 hours down the natural lazy river. You can't feel the heat, or the sun, or anything but RELAXED as you float along. About 3 times in the river there are quick 30 foot rapids-- the river turns into a wave pool for a minute, then you're back to floating slowly downstream.

We decided, since we were already half way there, to head further south to San Antonio. This is a city that looked much prettier than Austin (in our opinions) and we wished that we had more time there. The buildings have an old world feel, the people are nice, and there are many little shops that you can easily walk to. The city is more condensed than Austin, so walking is not a problem.

When we arrived, we started our visit with an IMAX movie of the battle at The Alamo. Unfortunately, we had to sit through the movie with a bunch of middle school kids (THEY HAUNT US!!) who talked and were rude for the first part of the movie. I gave one boy my teacher stare, he didn't appreciate that very much. But after muttering a few choice words, he was quiet for the rest of the time.

After that we went to the actual Alamo. It was hard to figure out where to go. It wasn't set up for tours, so we were confused about where to start. However, we did end up seeing the remants of the historical place and even toured the Alamo Shrine. (Personally, I couldn't take the shrine. People were so rude! It specifically says "no pictures, no cellphones, silence this is a shrine." Yet, everyone was talking loudly, kids were running, people were on their cell phones and taking pictures... so rude)

We then spent our last night in McKinney Falls State Park and prepared for our long drive to Tucson, Arizona!

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