Last Night in Austin

Here is a picture of downtown Austin and the capitol building from the perspective of the Congress Street Bridge. What a beautiful evening! We were finally able to see the bats tonight! They were a little late in emerging from their roosts under the bridge, but when they did it was absolutely spectacular. I heard from a couple of people that the later in the summer it gets, the easier it is to see them flying around. We got a couple of pictures, but they are not really good enough to be able to see the bats. I am so happy that we had the opportunity before we left to see them though!

I am a bit behind in the blogging thing because the past day and a half were packed full of activities. Monday morning was spent checking out of the Holiday Inn on Town Lake, and also running along the Colorado River. I was going to use the treadmill in the hotel fitness center, but why waste the opportunity to run in the great outdoors! :) We then drove the sixty or so miles down to San Antonio and spent half of the day exploring the Riverwalk and the surrounding sights. It was just so hot and humid that we did not last long, and headed back to Austin before 5PM. The Riverwalk was ineresting, but a little too "touristy" for our liking. We took a neat little boat ride around the whole thing which was a good idea--so we would not have to walk the two and a half miles in the heat! We wanted to go up into the Tower of the Americas, which is the second largest observation tower in the US, behind the Stratosphere in Vegas. It was too expensive though, so we just decided to take a couple of pictures and call it a day in San Antonio!

Of course after getting back to Austin, we were super hungry. Although we did eat at County Line BBQ in Albuquerque, a trip to Austin would not be complete if we did not make a visit to the one here in Austin on the river. We had a wonderful BBQ dinner and headed back to our hotel for the night.

Today we slept in a bit then headed out to McKinney Falls State Park, which is about 13 miles southeast of Austin. We went on this small trail which lead down by a creek, and because of all of the recent rains, the waterfalls were spectacular! The park was a bit odd and the trail map hard to decipher, so we kept the hiking to a minimum and were not there for very long. We did find some shade under a rocky overhang and had our picnic lunch though! :) Since we have been going pretty much non-stop the whole trip, we rested for awhile in our hotel after returning from the hike and did not leave until later in the afternoon.

Tomorrow is the wonderful trip up to El Paso, which is definitely not one of my favorite places! I am glad it is only a stopover on the way to Scottsdale--and an eight hour drive at that! I will be sad to leave Austin, but looking forward to the next time we can get back to this unique city.