Cindy and Dave's Adventures

I am so happy that we started this tradition 4 years ago as a way to see Cherie in Atlanta. This is our third trip (yeah…COVID and 2020) and we chose Austin, Texas. Cherie was able to join us after missing last year in Nashville. Something about grad school 😉. But now she has graduated and has a real job AND had Veteran’s day off. So she flew down from Bozeman and joined us in Texas. We are still working on getting Jenny in on the fun but again…grad school.

Des and Kris are wonderful traveling companions. I think we are pretty compatible and complementary together. This trip started a bit rough in that Kris, Des and I got diverted to Dallas for an extra 3 hours of traveling time. Cherie was almost diverted to San Antonio but her plane snuck in to Austin. Of course, that also meant she had to wait for us in the airport since we have the car! She said the Austin airport was a madhouse since no planes could land and then go on to the next destination. We at least missed that part.

Once we were together, the fun began. These trips are about seeing new things, walking and talking a lot (Des is part of the group, you know) , and eating a lot. So we started with dinner at Velvet Tacos. Cherie and I truly enjoyed Velvet Tacos on our Texas trip and I had introduced Des and Kris in Nashville. Very, very good and different tacos! Then off to the hotel to plan the rest of the trip! The delay also meant that we mostly missed the rain so that was a bonus. We only had 2 days to see Austin so planning was a must!

Out the door at 7 am for breakfast at Magnolia Cafe (from triple D). But we got there a little early so we wandered around to see murals and let Des start her picture taking. And we found The Salty donuts. Wow oh wow. Brown sugar and vanilla for our breakfast appetizer. Yum. Then next door for our real breakfast that was also so yummy. Then we headed out for a walk around the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to burn off some of those calories! That was quite beautiful now (and they had an amazing Monarch butterfly exhibit) and we could only imagine what it must be like in the spring. It is almost 300 acres in size. Everything is bigger in Texas, you know!

After our walk around the wildflower center, we headed back into the city and decided that we better get to Terry Black’s BBQ for lunch before it got busy. Too late. Turns out that UT Austin was playing Texas Christian (TCU) in football and they were all pouring into the city in prep for the game that night. The stadium holds over 100,000 and it was sold out! But the line moved quickly, and we truly enjoyed our meal. Definitely worth the wait. It was probably the best brisket I have ever had. We were so stuffed by the time we left!

So naturally we seriously needed to walk off lunch so we headed to the Capitol building. Shocked it was open on a Saturday. We stopped first at a bakery/historical museum that was quite interesting. Then we got in line to go through security. There are 2 security lines – a regular one where they look through your bag and you go through the metal detector, and a second that adds an area to drop off your guns before you go through security. I didn’t feel that I saw that many people carrying (definitely less than we saw in Arizona) but there were those with their gun. The Capitol building was very interesting- things like Texas had a woman governor before Anne Richards. In the 1920s. It was built similarly to our Capitol building here in California except that there was a star on anything they could put it on. It started as part of the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of France, Republic of Mexico, part of the Confederate States and finally as part of the United States. They seem to be quite proud of all of those pieces of their past.

Then we needed to get ready to see the bats come out for the night – they rose under the Congress Street Bridge. It is rather late in the year so only about 10% are still in Austin. The little brown bats migrate to Mexico. Kris and Cherie were not too sure about watching bats flying around but they got into it. I brought my binoculars and it was cool to watch the bats walking around in the support struts before the sun went down. There were probably 200 people waiting in the grassy area near the bridge. It was a cloudy night so the hardest part was actually seeing the bats fly out! But there was a tour boat under the bridge and they shone a red spotlight so you could see all the bats pour out from under there! And it was pretty cold just standing around waiting. I think we had a pretty good time. Of course, Des met people and truly enjoyed her people watching. Then back to the hotel to rest for Sunday.

Sunday morning we went to Sawyer and Co for the most amazing “Louisiana” style breakfast. With such good biscuits. Our server was entirely personable! Such a great kid. Those three had grits also with their breakfast – I stuck with potatoes. And eggs and bacon. It is great traveling with Des and Kris – they don’t eat bacon so more for me! Then we headed off to the LBJ Presidential library on the UTA campus. So cool. I had a pretty negative opinion of him, due to the Vietnam Conflict, but I warmed to him. Mostly because he supported all the civil rights laws/ programs Kennedy had gotten organized even though he originally did not support them. I can appreciate a person changing opinions due to learned facts! LBJ did that. He seems like he was probably a bit of a bully and used his size to get into people’s faces, but he was also a good dad and grandpa. What can you do?

From there we went on a short hike overlooking the city and saw were the wealthy people lived along the Colorado River. Wow!

From the overlook we wandered around downtown a bit and then went to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden. It was quite cool. Lots of what I think he originally molded was religious but there were also animals and old style sculptures. He was into very skinny women and men for sure. We got our $7 worth!

Then off to eat lunch and start heading for the airport. Again great food at Moreno BBQ. Definitely not a shortage of great BBQ in Austin. This was a smaller site (Triple D again) and they had great pork ribs and Mac n cheese. And pecan pie. And pulled pork. We are our fill since our flight went through dinner time and we had a pretty short layover in Long Beach. Shock to me- LongBeach airport has 11 gates and 2 terminals now. And it has actual food places. But we did not have long there and headed home. This trip was a day shorter than most and we felt a bit more rushed. But it is always fun to go with these gals!