Spring in Austin

Bat statue in AustinI have to say, I am loving the beautiful weather nowadays. Austin takes on a different life during the spring – the foliage turns unbelievable green, and the gorgeous weather makes hanging out at a lake the most languid experience, ever. Yesterday, my husband and I decided to try canoeing – which is just $10 dollars for an hour at Lady Bird Lake. So we went with our one year old son, donned lifejackets and got into the canoe. Considering that we hadn’t done anything adventurous since our son was born, we were pretty excited. But our son made it clear he was not. So we gave up 10 minutes into it, and went home, feeling pretty lame.

Today was a completely different experience. We thought we would go to Zilker Park, to enjoy Barton Springs. The temperature was 90 degrees, and the water was beautiful, not to mention cheap, at $3 per adult. And our son loved it! He was splashing around in the water, and laughing at all the dogs. It was so much fun!

Speaking of dogs, Austin is super dog friendly–much more any other place, as far as I know. So much so that my son’s second word learned was “Bow-Wow”! You see proud owners taking their dogs for walks all the time.

Another fun thing we do is go on the Barton Creek Greenbelt Trail. It is good exercise, and you can jump into water bodies bodies found along the way. The landscape is untouched, except for the trail, so you get to experience nature as well. Really great for mountain biking enthusiasts, too.

Gosh, I just realized I have four more months in Austin. I am really going to miss the restaurants, terrain and lakes :(.

One thing  I am not going to miss is the bats….because bats just freak me out, and Austin has a significant bat population. I don’t mean you would run into them every day or anything….far from it. But…. I got an informational e-mail the other day from the McCombs School warning me that bats are a high-rabies risk species and so, don’t touch it if you find one on campus. I thought that was pretty amusing. I know I haven’t seen one yet on campus. By the way, there is a bridge in Austin that people go to, just to “experience” these bats. It is supposedly the largest urban bat colony in North America. It is called the Congress Bridge, and believe it or not, this is a tourist destination!

 One last thing, completely unrelated to anything I have written about in this post: there is this documentary called “An Inconvenient Tax” which is going to screen (free for UT students) at the Blanton Museum of Art Theater tomorrow at 6:45 p.m., which is about the controversies of tax reform. I am pretty excited to watch it and just wanted to mention it!

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