"We're all here because we're not all there"

The hot pink "Austin Overtures" mini-bus took us on a tour of Austin and the western suburbs this morning. It was a great way to get to know the City. Yesterday finished up the three-week South by Southwest festival in Austin and today was the first warm, sunny, spring-time day, high in the lower 80s.  

The downtown area of Austin is flat, but just on the western border of downtown is the Balcones Escarpment, a 20-million-years-old inactive fault zone that marks the beginning of the Texas Hill Country that extends 150 miles to the west. It really is startling to drive west out of the city and all of a sudden you are driving up into hills. 

The most obvious fact about Austin is that it is a city under construction - in fact, our tour guide said that the official bird of Austin is the Construction Crane. The city itself is about 800,000, but the greater metropolitan area is 1.8 million. For the past 5-years-in-a-row Austin has been the fast-growing city in the U.S.; approximately 30 - 40 people a day move to Austin. There are three entertainment districts, one more up-scale than the other. Home to the "bat bridge", every night in the spring and summer millions of Mexican free-tail bats fly out from under the bridge at dusk and turn the sky into a black cloud of bats.. There are some mosquitos left in Austin, but not many.

The two major festivals, South by Southwest in the spring, and Austin City Limits festival in October, bring in millions of tourist dollars. Austin is now adding Formula One racing to its attractions to bring in additional revenue. Money in Austin comes mostly from high tech companies, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell, Inc., founded by former University of Texas student Michael Dell. So many high-tech corporations have opened up shop locally that the region's been dubbed the "Silicon Hills."

The state Capitol and surrounding government office buildings form the heart of downtown Austin, but the 75,000, students, faculty and staff, that make up the University of Texas, dominate the city on the north side.

Our tour took us to the western neighborhoods and some attractions including a drive by the highest point in Austin, Mt.  Bonnell. The Colorado River flows in from the northwest and is damed in two places to form Lady Bird Lake in downtown and Lake Austin, lined with mansions, at the base of Mt. Bonnell. 

Other interesting sights along the tour - the Texas State Cemetery, resting place of Chris Kyle of American Sniper fame, Darrell Royal and Tom Landry, along with other historical figures. The Texas Legislature is in session only every other year and is in session now. The figure on the top of the state capitol building is 15 foot Goddess of Liberty. Taller than the Statue of Freedom on the U.S. Capitol, this makes the Texas capitol taller. University of Texas has a $13.9 billion endowment that can be used only for construction or remolding. The Royal Football Stadium, which dominates the campus, can seat 101,000 people.

David, our tour guide.

After our tour we drove back to a number of places we had just passed by, including Mt. Bonnell. This time we climbed to the top where we ate our lunch.

View of downtown Austin from 785 feet up atop Mt. Bonnell. 

Mountain laurel blooming on Mt. Bonnell.

View west of the city from Mt. Bonnell. You can see the mansions lining Lake Austin.

Another place we returned to was the Mayfield Nature Center where there was a short hike.

There was a viewpoint over a pond. See if you can see the fish and the turtle. (Fish in the center left of the picture; the turtle is on the end of the log just below center right.)

Along the trail there were numerous places where we had to cross rain-swollen streams.

In the stream in the picture above, where we crossed, the channel of the stream was strewn with rocks and this fish got caught. After we took this picture, Frederick used his walking poles and nudged the fish back into the channel and it swam into a larger pool, hopefully to catch it's breath.

At the Nature Center building and surrounding picnic area were several friendly peacocks.

From the Mayfield Nature Center we drove further out of the city to the Wild Basin Preserve where we found a 2.15 mile hike.

More streams to cross.

There was a waterfall along the trail so here's the selfie. You might just be able to see the falls next to my right ear.

P.S. The quote in the title of today's blog is from South Austin, a Bohemian section of town. The people there say, "We're all here because we're not all there."