Austin: June 19-21. "The night we lost our breath."

The drive through Texas, as warned, was very long. Before getting to Austin, we spent the night at a Walmart outside Dallas. By the time we arrived the following day, the afternoon was about at it's hottest. We have been to Austin previously and remembered the beautiful Barton Spring Pools... which was mostly under construction when we'd been there previously in February. Since it was around 108 degrees, we drove right to the spring parking lot. The water is 68 year round, and is full of seaweed and fishies. It's gorgeous. A perfect way to enter a city experience on a hot Texas afternoon.

We spent all day there. Why wouldn't you? It was over a hundred degrees and humid. And the water is constantly 68. Made for a great day. We adorably had a picnic in the park after the long swim (2-7pm!) It felt like a wonderful welcome back to a city we had adored the first time. When traveling to so many new places, I wonder if comparing all the cities of America will drastically change our opinions of places we've been before. So far, that has not been the case. Austin is great.


After our picnic we went for a stroll down the Green Belt, what we had explored and fallen in love with years before. It was still great, but since it was June as opposed to February and 109 degrees instead of 75, the walk ended up quite sweaty and quite short.  We missed that water real quick.

We remembered the enjoyable walk-able strip of SoCo (South Congress St), and headed there next.

All the shops were closed. We popped into a cafe where I blogged (about something that had happened long ago, surely) and KG went for a stroll and some phone chats. We also wandered near the capitol and around downtown. The day (before too late, mind you) was a success.

When we were ready to call it a night, we discussed if we should drive to the nearest Walmart (which wasn't all too near) or if we should just park on the street of this rad bohemian city and assume no one will bother us. It certainly wasn't unnerving in Asheville. So, we parked along a residential road and settled in... assuming now that the temperature had dropped from the 100's to the 70's, we'd be fine. Windows cracked, blankets off, this will go well. Surely, I'll fall asleep soon. Surely, this feeling of drifting off I'm almost experiencing is sleep... not suffocation. No no, it is. Suffocation. I'm so tired, so "out-of-it", yet so fully aware I just might be dying. Am I dying? My body is certainly radiating with waves of intense misery and the air is certainly as stale and thick as an oven cooking a creature that if it wasn't dead before hand is certainly dead now. Am I breathing? I think. A little. Every now and again I hear myself or KG sighing intensely, probably to hear if our breathing mechanism is still going. I turn over and crack my eyes to see through the veil of overheated insanity, and see KG stick his mouth out the back window and suck in some life from the outside.
We both start having visions of collapsing in someone's front yard to sleep. That won't do. Finally KG shakes off the heat coma and says he will drive us to Walmart... maybe it will be better? I am half asleep, half dead and half evil at the time.
We arrive at the Walmart 25 or so minutes later (close to 3am)... and somehow, the plan made sense. All the houses and dense foliage everywhere in the residential streets must have scientifically blocked any air flow (obviously?) The open space of a welcoming Walmart -- wait, scratch that. We arrive to what our internets SAID was a Walmart, and it's a Sam's Club. Which is pretty much the same thing? It's also 3am. We're sleeping here. Point being, the air flowed. The breeze "blowed". (I know that's not right, that's why it's in quotes... but flowed sounded good with blowed.) It was hot, but we slept. Considerably less feverishly.

When we woke up, we noticed a cop car had pulled a car over from the expressway into the Sam's Club lot. We haven't researched it, but although Walmart is legal to sleep in we fear Sam's Club is not. There is another mobile home type van, and after the cop finishes with the car, he pulls directly behind us. We daren't breathe (which we were used to from our horrific experience the night before). He stayed a while (looking up our license to see if we're wanted?) But eventually left without bothering us. Then we left too. Sam's Club is no Walmart, as far as hotel parking lots are concerned.

I was grouchy the next day. It was quite a night. We got breakfast. We got coffee. It reached over 100 once again, so we headed back to the water. Instead of the $3 per person Barton Springs, we went on the other side of the fence to the creek -- where it's free and far more lawless feeling. Dogs everywhere, drinks, radios, no lifeguards... probably a more genuinely "Austin" swim spot.

We then went back to another favorite spot from our last visit -- Sandra Bullock owned hot spot: Walton's Fancy and Staple. It is a cafe, bakery & floral shop. We fell in love with the "Golden Egg" previously... and we've sort of been talking about it ever since. It's a very simple and cheap goody, that KG loves explaining is a real egg laid by Sandra, herself. Depending on the season, they can be more or less plentiful. It's a good gag.

We highly recommend Sandra's eggs.

As we wondered what to do next, we saw the crowd of spectators forming on the "bat bridge" -- where they say there are at times millions of bats flying from underneath at nightfall. We parked the Scuttlebuss and ran to the bridge. We got there before there was any commotion from below, quite a bit before. Spectators began to grumble.

 Little by little, they began to fly from below. They were admittingly a bit hard to see and there were less than most people anticipated, but it was still far more neat than the vocal old man to my left thought. "Our waiter told us it was like they fly up in a giant tornado! I'm so disappointed. This is ridiculous." He stayed to complain a while before taking his wife to see something more on the level of tornado-excitement. We stayed a while longer, because I still enjoyed standing on the bridge and watching the less-than-millions of bats flutter into the trees.

We wandered the area and decided to try one of the recommended classy beer spots nearby.

We walked 6th street just to do it (that's the main "party street"). Those places are always interesting to walk through, since simply by our appearance all of the employees and patrons seem aware we don't belong. The chants of "Come on, get your Sally-Shoe-Shine-Shot here!" (or whatever fancy liquor drinks are called these days) often halt as we walk by.

We walked so very far from our van and (due to my lack of sleep the night previous) I was tired. I had to sit on a curb for a bit, and wished out loud someone could carry me back to the Scuttlebuss. Strangely enough, a rickshaw guy offered us a ride as we continued our walk.
Us: "No thanks."
Him: "Seriously. I'm bored out of my skull. It's free."
Us: "That's ok."
Him: "I mean it. Don't make me just drive around with no one in the back. You'll be doing me a favor."
OK!
So, he drives us to our van. Which was even further than I thought. Much further. He talks to us about our travels, our van, etc. He even says he's looking to do something similar, except just live in a van in Austin. He asks us where we park to sleep. He drops us off at our van and bikes away, and KG muses that if this were a movie, he would have been a cop that was onto us and looking to get incriminating information. I'm sure he was just a dude, especially since he called cops "dicks"... although that is a good distraction from the truth of your cop-ness, I suppose.

We went back to Sam's Club from there... because we didn't know of another Walmart and we were quite through with attempting sleep on a residential street. It went just fine.
As we left the following morning (a morning of errands due to another vehicular Chernobyl) we drove past the Walmart... it had been less than a mile away all along. Of course.






We wandered into some of the shops on SoCo before rollin' on to San An(tonio).