Keep Austin Weird

Replica of The Statue of Liberty on the grounds of the capitol. The statue on the dome is holding the Lone Star.
Looking at the floor of the rotunda which shows the seals of the five governments that have ruled Texas.

The crowd at the Little Longhorn Saloon.

Jill with her friends and Nanc admiring the winning bike.

Little Longhorn preparing to "choose" the winner.

Dave, Nanc, Jill & John

A few bats above the people on the bridge who have gathered to watch.

A swarm of bats in the air after leaving the bridge.

We have moved on and are now staying at the Hwy 71 RV Park in Cedar Creek, Texas near Austin. We arrived during an early spring cold front and rain. There has been a long drought in this area so the locals are happy to see the rain but we really prefer warm, dry, sunny weather. After a couple days of the cold and rain we were rewarded with sunny skies and warm temps. Oh well, into every life a "little "rain must fall so we don't want to complain too much. On Saturday we went to 6th Street in Austin, the local hangout for college students, to listen to some Blues and have dinner. It is a pretty neat part of town with music flowing into the street from many venues and street musicians entertaining the crowds. On Sunday we toured the Texas state capitol, an impressive building with a rotunda and dome that is higher than the US Capitol. You know everything in Texas is bigger. Later in the day we hooked up with Jill Hubley, who Nanc worked with at Crown and has since relocated and working with a different company. It was great seeing Jill and she introduced us to the "real" Austin which started out at Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon were they were having a antique car and bike show accompanied by live rockabilly music with a HUGE crowd drinking beer and having a wonderful time. One of the "real" Austin events also taking place there was chicken sh_t bingo where patrons bought a numbered square painted on the bottom of a cage and then The Little Longhorn, the resident chicken, was placed in the cage to "choose" the winner. Afterwards we ate at Billy's, one of Jill's local favorites, and had a great evening of conversation on the deck. We were joined by John, a friend of Jill's and also Dave Parsons, another Crown friend who has also relocated to Austin but still works for Crown. One of our regrets in our travels is that it is hard to find these unique local places that are under the radar and away from the tourist areas if you don't have a contact with someone. On our last night in Austin we went to the Ann Richardson Congress Avenue Bridge to watch the bats emerge at dusk. At their height, as many as 1.5 million bats leave their daytime roost under the bridge to spend the night eating thousands of pounds of insects. While it was neat to see thousands of bats flying into the night skies, there were no where near the numbers that will appear later in the summer. We really enjoyed our time in Austin and we agree with the local saying, "Keep Austin Weird."