Darrell & Sharyn

We had an awesome weekend in Austin!! We had originally planned to leave Abilene at 5pm on Friday to slowly make our way down to Austin, but our plans changed. My dad called me around 8:30 that morning and said that they would be in Abilene around 5pm. I love getting to see my Dad and I don’t get to see him that often. So we pushed back our departure time to 6(ish).

Dad and Uncle Mike showed up at 5 and so we hung out for about an hour and then let them crash at our house to get some rest before finishing their load back to California. They always seem to stop by when we have stuff planned, but they never know where their loads are going to take them until last minute. Hopefully next time we will be home with nothing planned. 🙂

We finally left Abilene around 6:15 and headed straight for the hotel. We stayed in Downtown Austin so we could mostly walk places. We got to the hotel around 10:30 pm. After we checked in, we headed out to get some dinner and walk around on Sixth Street. It was fun. It really reminded us of Bourbon street in New Orleans. It was ridiculously crowded. We walked Sixth street and then we decided to head down to Fourth Street and the Warehouse district. I got tired, so I walked back to the hotel and Darrell and our friend Drew stayed and hung out for another hour and a half till the bars closed. They seemed to have a fabulous time.

On Saturday we just hung around and didn’t do much in the morning. I watched TV quietly while the guys slept. Darrell and I went up to brunch around 10:30. After brunch we decided to go check out the Gay Pride Festival that Austin had going on. We drove over there and hung out for a couple of hours. It was fun. There were a lot of different booths, a drag queen singing, lots of games, and all around fun times.

After the Pride Festival, we headed back to the hotel to rest and cool down for a little bit before heading to Lady Bird Johnson Lake for the Bat Cruise which was the main reason we went to Austin. Last year Kelly and Carla went with us. This year, Tim, Dana, and Drew joined us. It was fun. The boat went the other way up the river before the bats, so we got to see a different side of Austin.

We went under the bridge and were able to look up and see the cracks on the bottom of the bridge where the bats roost. The stains are the bat guano and it is stinky and loud under there. The story is that they wanted to widen Congress Street Bridge, but they didn’t want to get rid of the current bridge. So instead, they cut the current bridge into slices and then left the gaps underneath and filled them up top. That’s where the bats decided they would roost. They are Mexican Free-tail bats. There are about 1.5 million of them under the bridge.

We got off of the Bat Cruise and started heading back to our hotel, but I forgot that the Gay Pride Parade was going on, so we ended up spending probably close to an hour in traffic. When we finally made it to the hotel, a friend of Cory’s, Sa’ndor, was waiting and we headed out to dinner with him. It was fun. I tried the fish and chips at the pub, but it still didn’t match up to the fish and chips from California that I am use to. :/ We hung out in downtown Austin again until close to midnight.

Sunday was just a day to relax and head back home. We went out to Juan and a Million for breakfast (cheap!!!). Then we checked out of the hotel and were trying to decide on where to go. We ended up going to South Congress food trucks for some cupcakes first. 🙂 Darrell got the Double Dose which is Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting. I got the Sweetberry which is Strawberry cake with Strawberry cream cheese frosting. If you are ever in the Austin area, I highly recommend this food truck.

We sat around and ate our cupcakes and then we decided to go check out Barton Springs to see if it was really crowded since it was a hot day. Barton Springs is awesome!! It is built around an aquifer and not treated at all. It is like a river swimming pool. The water was really cold, and the ground was really slippery. I took my time getting in and didn’t spend much time there. Darrell jumped in and headed over to the diving board and did a couple dives. It was nice and relaxing for the few hours we spent there.

Then we began our trek home. We headed back through Fredericksburg so we could get some dinner and because we love the town of Fredericksburg. 🙂 We always stop and eat at the Brewing Company and they have an awesome German Potato Salad. Yummy!!!

So that was what we spent this weekend doing. It was fun and we were a little sad to see Sunday end so fast. But it was all around a great time. Next time we head down to Austin, I am thinking that Barton Springs will be on our list again.

We got a phone call requesting that we come spend a weekend at one of our resorts for our annual owners survey. We decided to go ahead and go to Schlitterbahn waterpark since we were going to be within half an hour from it. It has been something we were interested in doing since the first summer we moved out here and we saw commercials for it. So we invited some friends (only one was able to make it) and we headed out for a day of fun. The place was great and even though it was crowded, most of the lines weren’t that bad.

Because we hadn’t been there before, we went in the wrong entrance and then spent a good chunk of time walking all the way around the park to find the lockers for our towels and what not. We found the lockers and then headed to the bar to grab a drink before going to wait in line for one of the bigger rides, Master Blaster. Master Blaster is one of the rides that shoots occupants uphill. The ride was fun, but the wait was not. We were so glad that we had gotten the drink beforehand as we were in line for about 2.5 hours. They did sell water and beer at the top right before getting on the ride(at about the 30 minute wait mark), but it was a long wait until we got there.

The new side of the park was closed loop rides with treated water. We spent about half the day there and half the day on the original side. The original side uses non-treated water pulled from the nearby Comal River. It was really nice since the water was cooler and at the end of most rides, you were dropped into the river. Some rides you were able to float down the river for a little while before the end of the ride. We personally enjoyed that side more. There were a couple of fun rides on the new side, but we enjoyed the slow/fast mix of the original side rides.

So we had fun and it was worth the price once we figured things out. Neither of us got really sunburnt. The food in the park was actually decent. The drinks were ok. I’m not sure exactly what I think of a strawberry daiquiri made with wine instead of rum. It tasted good though. We might end up going back at some point if we are still here next year, but at least we can mark off one item from our list. We have a few more and haven’t decided when we will go ahead and mark those off. Knowing that we are coming up soon on our exit from Texas makes us realize that we need to do some of these things while we live here instead of traveling back here. We shall see. 🙂