Day Three in Austin, TX

Hey Y'all... It's a slightly overcast day today which is a big relief as it's still hot but there's a nice breeze and no sun beating down on us.

After we enjoyed a delightful meal at the breakfast buffett we headed out for horseback riding. Obviously Katherine & Kim were a tad more adept at this than Willie and I, but we city folk were able to keep up. I have attached a photo of me on the horse for Lulu's enjoyment in particular.

Afterwards I investigated the Hyatt spa, and then we all did a bit more tubing down the lazy river until it was time for rock climbing and zip lining. Willie made it all the way to the top of the rock climbing wall, with Katherine close behind. Kim (with a little help from the college student in charge) figured out how to video them on their zip line rides, so we'll see if that makes it on the blog (a challenge for Tony at the office!!!). Can't write any more as we are off to a boat ride under a bridge where we will see thousands and thousands of... well I'll let you know later!

OK back from our excursion, and I will now reveal where we were heading...albiet unsuccessfully. We had planned on a dinner river boat ride where we would eat fajitas and cruise under the Ann W. Richards Congress Bridge, which houses the world's largest urban population of Mexican Free-tailed Bats. Starting in February, up to 1.5 million bats take up residence inside the bridge's expansion & contraction zones, as well as in long horizontal grooves running the length of the bridge's underside, an environment ideal for raising their young. Every evening around sunset the bats emerge in search of food (insects)...this event is a popular one with locals AND tourists, with more than 100,000 viewers a year! PS - the bats migrate to Mexico each winter.

SO this is what we had PLANNED, but alas the skies in Austin had turned dark and it looked like rain...there was thunder and lots of spectacular zig-zaggy lightening, sometimes 4 or 5 at a time! So the hotel cancelled the boat ride (note: it never did rain). But the good news is we were pointed to a great Mexican Restaurant -GUERO'S. I have determined that I could never live in Texas - the food here is just toooooo good.

Tomorrow Willie heads west to Los Angeles, and I head east to Boston to meet up with Lulu to help her settle into Boston College for her Sophomore year. The journey continues!

Did you know:
* Texas is the second largest state of the US (Alaska is 1st, with California 3rd) and is also the second largest in population (California is first at nearly 37 million while Texas has 23 million)
* Austin is known as "Silicon Valley of the south" because of large number of tech companies located there (19 year old Michael Dell launched the now Fortune 500 company Dell Computers from his dorm room at UT)
* The official slogan of Austin is "The Live Music Capital of the World" and the unofficial slogan is "Keep Austin Wierd".