Day 5: Austin

There’s far too much to do in most cities to expect to cover one in a day. The main purpose of many of our stops is just to get a taste of the area; to dip in a toe and get a first impression.

Because we were staying at the Omni downtown, we were right in the thick of things as we drove in on Saturday night. Sixth Street is like New Orleans’ Bourbon Street or Memphis’ Beale Street: lots of music, lots of drunk and crazy people. The street we were supposed to take to get to our hotel was blockaded, so we had to play the one-way street maze game until we were able to work our way to the hotel’s parking garage.

We were pretty exhausted after the drive and stops across Louisiana, so we left the exploring for the following morning.

What a difference a few hours made. Sunday morning brought church for the fine people of Austin, who no doubt were seeking forgiveness for the previous night’s excesses (yeah, right).

Actually, for a while, most of the people we saw in the area were homeless — there was a very visible problem downtown, with an unusual number of beggars and people sleeping in doorways. We even saw paramedics checking on people who were possibly overdosing or suffering from other issues related to their plight. I’ve seen it in other cities, sure, but it really stood out in this part of Austin.

That sad fact aside, the city itself is quite interesting. The architecture is a mix of old and new, and the geography alternates between hills and plateaus. We took our time walking and looking around until we arrived at the Capitol Building. Since we had already stopped for a look at the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee and had toured the Louisiana Capitol in Baton Rouge, we decided to take this tour as well.

Texas’s history, like Louisiana’s, is rich. It was forged under a variety of ruling nations: Mexico, Spain, France, Texas itself (as an independent republic), the United States, and the Confederacy, before returning to the U.S. Six nations, hence, the six flags over Texas.

See what you can learn on a tour?

After our visit to the Capitol we did something a bit odd. 

From October, 1977 to May, 1979, my family lived in Western Oaks, a subdivision about 15 minutes southwest of downtown Austin by car. On a whim, we went to the old neighborhood. After all, I had already been to all three of my old Louisiana homes in Belle Chasse, Baton Rouge, and Moss Bluff.

I knocked on the door and told the man who answered that I had once lived there, some forty years earlier, I was wondering if I could take some pictures of the outside of the house before my family and I headed back downtown to see the bats fly from Congress bridge. He said it was fine. To my surprise, though, he came outside, introduced himself as Mr. Culver, and invited me and the family inside to look around. He and his wife were lovely people — retired and living there for about twenty-one years. He knew some of the same names and places that I managed to dredge up from a ten year-old’s memory, and we stayed quite a bit longer than we had expected. In fact, it wasn’t until we saw that a tornado watch had been issued for the whole area that we decided it was time to leave.

“With the storm coming, you might miss the bats,” he said. “When it gets dark, they fly.”

He was correct. But we did get to watch one hell of a storm from our hotel. And there would be time for bats later in our journey.

We ordered room service as we waited for the storm to pass, and when things dried up a bit, we took a walk back to the Capitol for some night shots. I don’t know where the homeless sleep during storms like that, but they were all back out again when it was done. We ducked into a few 7-11s to avoid the (generally benign) panhandling.

Our visit finished with breakfast at the famous Voodoo Doughnuts. We then packed up the car and took the short drive to our next stop: San Antonio