Austin: Colorful, Delicious, Weird

January 14, 2019

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.

When Garth Brooks says he’ll go on down to the Oasis, I’m pretty sure this is NOT the place he has in mind.
With mostly outdoor seating for 2000 people, the Oasis claims to be the sunset capital of Texas. It certainly fit that description when we were there. The famous love locks from Paris have made their way to the decks as well.
We enjoyed a wonderful meal here with Pastor Bob Bolender and his lovely wife Sharon.
We missed family at Christmas, So our present to each other was a Christmas eve dinner at the best steak place in town, ended with Bananas Foster. Lovely wife, sunset view, excellent meal. It was rough duty, but somebody had to do it.
On the other end of the spectrum is Salt Lick Barbeque, which devotes almost nothing to ambiance.
But their wood smoked barbeque is famous. They let Ellen behind the counter to get this photo.
Yes, there are 2 layers of meat there. A full rack of ribs doesn’t fit lengthwise on the platter.
Here is a representative section of the bike path which run along both sides of Ladybird Lake.
With downtown views like this, along with birds and turtles on all the floating logs.
And this, referred to locally as the “Jenga Building.”