A Good Weekend

On Friday night we went out with our new pals, Boyd and Lorraine, for some drinks in South Congress, which is kind of like the West End of Glasgow. Boyd is employed by National Semiconductors in Greenock, and has been assigned over here by them for a limited time (but he doesn't know how long). They arrived about a month before us, and have been showing us the ropes. Their friend Lorne (Texan) came too, and we started talking to a woman called Baker in the first bar, who was amusingly weird, and tagged along too. We ended up in the Continental Club for some country music and some dancing. As you can see a few light ales were consumed.

The next day we headed out on to Town Lake and rented a 2 man kayak for a leisurely roam about. It was nice and cool being so close to the water, and a great way to see some of the downtown area. We then summitted the highest mountain in Austin, Mount Bonnell, I am told it is nearly 800 feet!! Here are some pictures of the views from the top, this one of the river heading back towards the city, and the next of the view of the downtown area. A much more sedate day, which was in order after the night before!

San Antonio - memorial weekend

Oops, just realised that I didn't tell you about San Antonio, which was last weekend. It is actually only an hour away by car, and is a really nice city. It has a lovely walk along the river that runs through the city, the walk is about 20 feet below street level and has lots of lovel trees providing shade, and is full of tourists, restuarants, and boats. It provides some relief from the heat, and is definitely worth going to see. Here is a picture I took from a cafe on the side, we couldn't quite figure out why this boat has an avalanche-risk flag on the back, none of the rest of them did.

It was allegedly a chilli-queen festival that weekend, so we wandered over to the market square to take a look. It was set up in a very festive manner, but I think we were too early, there didn't appear to be much chilli

We then got stuck in a Texas 'shower' - the heavens opened and there was a torrent of rain for about 15 minutes. We hid under an overhang of the Hilton hotel and laughed at passers-by getting soaked.

We then visited the Alamo, the story of the battle is pretty impressive, but there isn't that much left of it to see, I think it disappoints a lot of Americans because of that. For those of you who don't know, the Alamo was originally a mission, hence the churchy feel of the outside.

But driving up to our barbeque later that afternoon, we were hit by some more rain, and it wasn't so funny this time. We couldn't see anything out the window (and unfortunately were driving at 60 along the highway at the time) and the rain turned to hail and caused a couple of dings in the windscreen. Here is a photo of all the cars parked on the hardshoulder under a bridge, they just stopped there, there was no real warning it was going to happen, which was quite scary! It could have been because they couldn't see anything, but possibly more to stop the hail denting the cars. We felt it would be rude not to join them! 15 minutes later, the rain had reverted to the type in the first photo, which we now think of as just a light drizzle, and everyone got on their way again. Madness!

McKinney Falls State Park

On Saturday we headed out to our local state park, which turns out to be just 10 minutes away, on the road between the flat and Rich's work.  It is quite a bit bigger than the city parks, so think we will be going to it a lot more often now.  It has a 'gnarly' hike/bike trail of 2.8 miles - there was a sign warning of steep descents and uneven surfaces, so we were quite hopeful as we started to walk round it that this might be the biking we were looking for  No luck, however, it is tarmaced all the way, and at the only hint of a gradient there was another sign advising cyclists should get off and push.  This isn't like biking in Scotland - have we been spoiled too much?!

It is another large wooded area, we really weren't expecting so many of these near/in Austin, so the walk was pretty shady, which was a great relief as it was already hot at 11am.  We also found a bouldering/climbing area, not quite sure how much is here, but it all seems to be on a large rock overhang, so again pretty shady to beat the heat.  Although by the time our climbing stuff arrives, I reckon we will be into the summer proper, and it might not provide that much relief! 

Here is a picture of both of us together - a first, I think, for the US!  This is near the bouldering, and also the 'falls' - there is not much water falling anywhere at the moment due to their drought-like conditions just now.  So no pictures of Rich assessing its runnability, unfortunately.

 

We did spot quite a lot of wildlife in the river though, an eel/water-snake, which I have to say put us off going for a swim, lots of fish and some turtles.  This was the daddy, although I'm not sure you can tell from the photo, but he was ginormous!