Austin, TX

Beautiful day, blue sky, warming temperatures…time for a road trip. We have been staying in Georgetown, TX and today was the day for a tour of Austin. Our friend, Mike, is a native Texan and has been an Austinite since the late 1950s and he was itching to give us a tour.

Our first leg was a riding tour of the western edge of Austin ending at Mount Bonnell. We were given descriptions of what it was like before development and then saw how development has changed the area.

We then headed into Austin stopping at Zilker Park to visit Barton Springs pool, no swimming for us today, and enjoy the park. The park covers over 350 acres and was donated to the city in 1917 by Andrew Jackson Zilker. Within the park is Barton Springs which has a constant temperature of 68 degrees and 26 million gallons of water flows per day. It is said that Robert Redford learned to swim in Barton Springs and that in the 1970s you would find topless sunbathers.

Barton Springs Pool

Swim anyone?

From there we visited the University of Texas campus, Congress Avenue Bridge, Whole Foods, and other areas of downtown. Unfortunately we were not able to view the bats living under the Congress Avenue Bridge. Hopefully that will happen on our next visit. The bridge houses the world’s largest urban bat colony with approximately 1.5 million bats.

My LSU Tiger is a traitor

Bat Sculpture

Now Whole Foods where you could have an eating frenzy. Whole Foods began life in 1980 with the merging of Safer Way Natural Foods and Clarksville Natural Grocery. This first store had a staff of 19; today there are over 300 stores with many more than 19 employees.

Works of Art

Fresh Bread

Heading back to Georgetown, our final stop was Fiesta; another store where you could eat your way through the aisles. While Whole Foods offered upscale shopping, Fiesta was down home goodness. We bought dinner – tamales and Mexican salad.