~ natural beauty and a bat colony ~

On Wednesday October 15th, Day Four of the trip to Austin, Josh and I ventured downtown for coffee at an establishment called Little City. It was a mediocre experience. My coffee was hardly worth drinking for lack of flavor and I was horrified at the styrofoam cup in which it came. Additionally, I've lost patience with establishments where I spend my hard earned money who make it ridiculously difficult for me to properly go to the restroom. Little City coffee, thumbs down.

Our plan for the day was to go to the Botanical Gardens, but we became a tad sidetracked (cough, cough) in finding some public restrooms in the Zilker wildernessy area. We located one at the Zilker Nature Center where we had some nature learning experiences, saw some animals in cages, and did a bit of hiking. On one of the signs, it read that all of the animals that they had captive were ones that they found injured in the wild that would have died otherwise. So they had eagles with arthritis and stunted wings, blind owls, and I felt particularly sorry for all of them. But whatever, it was a beautiful day. After some time, we went down Robert E. Lee road for some lunch, and had some Mexican food at Baby Acapulco's. It was pretty good, overly cheesy and fatty, but tastey. Afterwards, we hopped onto our bicycles and transported our persons to the Botanical Gardens. Which were stunning. I am always a big fan of spending time in botanical gardens. You know, the pretty flowers and shit. The first bit that we spent time in was the Japanese Gardens which were, uh, very japaneesey. The Gardens are bordered on one side by a highway, and that is the side of the Japanese Gardens which use a bamboo forest as a buffer. At some point, we climbed on some of the rocks and we were able to look out and see over the bamboo, downtown Austin. And it was neat, being in this huge sanctuary buffered by folliage. This part of the gardens also had pools filled with koi. It was a very relaxing place to be. And you know, part of going on vacation is the relaxation bit and taking time to smell the roses. And in between the Japanese Gardens and the rest of the Botanical Gardens was the Rose Gardens. Beyond those were a series of other gardens, including a primitive plant garden and a butterfly garden. It was very nice.

After we had our fill of nature's beauty, we ventured over to the Daily Juice for another refreshing beverage. I had another blueberry lemonade and Josh ordered the most expensive smoothie on the menu, a Subliminator. Then we toodled over to South Congress for some shopping in the hipster clothing, vintage, and antique shops. We broke this up with another coffee experience at an obscure place called Bouldin Creek cafe, which is highly recommended for its unusualnitudiness. After further South Congress exploration, we rode our bikes down to the Congress Avenue bridge where we sat on the grassy knoll with other tourists to watch the bats fly out from under at dusk. For whatever reason, there are an ass-load of bats living under the bridge, and it's been named the World's Largest Urban Bat Colony. And every night at dusk, they all fly out from under the bridge to go about their nightly living. As we arrived on the knoll about half an hour before dusk, we waiting for about that long. When it started to get dark and the clouds were rolling in, we could see the odd bat here and there flying underneath the bridge. After a while, one or two bats would fly out from under the bridge, mounting our suspense. Josh ran down to the river to get a better look, while I remained on the knoll out of comfort and a desire to watch the bikes. At some point, when it was too dark to take any photos, pretty much all at once, the bats came out. They formed this great big line, twenty abreast, and came pouring out from underneath the bridge. It truly was not the most spectacular sight (actually, it was a bit anticlimactic), but I was impressed with the sheer quantity of bats. Yes, it's a big bridge, but as I determined, each bat must take up a specific amount of space and it did not seem possible to me for that many bats to fit on the underside of the bridge. And they just kept coming, more and more bats. It was crazy.

Eventually, when the bats were still emerging, Josh and I decided to put the rubber to the peddle and get back to the hotel. For that evening, we had had every intention of going out and having a nightlife experience, but a thunderstorm rolled in, followed by some flash flooding. And we cuddled up with some cereal for dinner and crime shows for entertainment.

Posted by jennifer at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)