Austin: Colorful, Delicious, Weird

We spent the month of December in Austin, Texas. Our RV park was west of downtown Austin, near Lake Travis. The themes of the month were “repair” (major truck and RV work and a full scale RV wash and wax), “refresh” (enjoying the city bike paths, RV exercise room, and fellowship with Fleming relatives and the fine folks from Austin Bible Church), and “rejoice” (celebrating Ellen’s birthday and a special Christmas eve dinner).

So it should not be surprising that the pictures mainly revolve around the excellent bicycle adventures around downtown Austin and the fabulous food locations we enjoyed while we where there. We celebrated Ellen’s birthday twice. I took her to lunch at the Oasis, and we used Ellen’s birthday gift from the kids to enjoy Texas-style cooking at Salt Lick Barbeque. Christmas eve dinner at Steiner Ranch included a dessert of Bananas Foster. Pictures of all three of these places are shown below.

So what is the “weird” part? Well, everywhere you go in town you find souvenirs that proclaim the unofficial mantra of the city, which is “keep Austin weird.” I guess that any city whose main downtown bridge is home to hundreds of thousands of Mexican bats for most of the year can at least claim to be a little bit “batty.” Then again maybe it derives from the fact that it is the capital and liberal bastion of an otherwise conservative state. Oh, and then there is the habit of decorating cedar trees all along the side of the highway for Christmas. Cars stop, pull out garland, and create trees at random all over the place. Yeah, it’s a little weird.