As promised, photos from our quick trip to Austin, along with a bit of storytelling. All of them were taken with my phone. As they say, the best camera is the one you have with you.
We took a walk on a path along the Colorado River. Not THE Colorado River, the one I have photos of for next week. The other one. The one that’s contained entirely within the state of Texas. The last photo in this set is a detail that made me giggle.
While walking, we saw so many air plants on the bridges, in the trees. When I was a kid, my grandmom had one on her fridge, in a shell glued to a magnet. I had never thought about them growing wild.
One little park had one tree with hints of many baby birds.
But also, many hints of people.
We also walked from our hotel to the capitol. The mural photo up top was along that route.
The grounds had quite a few monuments to various people and events, the merits of which we could argue in some cases. I didn’t shoot those. These shots are of the Texas African-American History Memorial. It was well-designed, less white-washed than some I’ve seen. Room to improve, but some improvement shown, particularly in context.
Scaffolding along our walk:
We were there Friday through Sunday and noted that Austin—at least downtown Austin—has a lot of electric scooters available.
Most of them were parked neatly along the sidewalk (bearing stickers telling the rider not to ride on the sidewalk). Whether they were in small parking groups or left by the last rider, they tended to be tidy and not in the way.
People rode them on the sidewalk and in the street. Some rode confidently; others we weren’t sure were going to make it upright to their destination. Occasionally, two people jammed together on one.
Late Sunday morning, Climbing Daddy and I went for a walk.
“The scooters are evidence that last night was Saturday.”
We ended up with a bit of a squirrel theme, first stopping to take pictures of a giant squirrel statue on the side of the highway, and then seeing them hanging out at the capitol. The statue looked a little bit angry or conniving or something, though I guess the real squirrels look a bit like that, too…
Our hotel had this on one of its main walls, and it bothered me that the sentence wasn’t finished. Be in where?! But there were Texas flags in ridiculous quantities around the city and stars on nearly everything else, so I guess the blank didn’t need to be filled in.
Finally, a few shots of and from the plane window as we approached PHX.
