Texas - Part 6

Austin

Our last Texas tour day began with a bus tour of Austin. The guide, a standup comedian who performs in local clubs, amused me with a rapid fire stream of comments and facts delivered in a quirky kind of slang. Not everyone was amused by her delivery, but I enjoyed it immensely. (Some other guides on this tour were knowledgeable, but had annoying speaking styles. They often couldn't complete a sentence without backtracking to include some small historical detail.) Anyway, as the bus drove through different neighborhoods we saw many small nightclubs/bars where live music plays nightly. We also saw several colorful wall murals along the way. It was hard to get good pictures from within the moving bus. I missed capturing some of the better murals.

The guided tour ended with a visit to the Texas State Capital Building, an enormous, massive stone edifice, where we stood under the dome and saw some portraits of all past Texas governors.

After the capital building the comedian guide left us. It was lunch time, and our regular tour guide took us to a food truck park. She said Austin is famous for food truck culture. The colorful trucks were parked in a semicircle.

As you can see, there were six or seven different truck menus to choose from. About 75 percent of the available menu items were unfamiliar. I'd need several Google searches to even begin contemplating a choice. Instead, I looked for something recognizable. Suspicious of spicy barbecue sauce, I skipped the barbecue truck and settled on a lobster roll.

Bad luck. The red truck was out of lobster, so I got two hot dogs instead. These were really excellent hot dogs, so I hit the jackpot! While eating at our picnic table we were entertained by loud, squawking great-tailed grackles who make a living on scraps from the food truck park.

In addition to regular food trucks in the area there was also a gelato truck, a barber shop truck, and the drug truck pictured below.

After lunch we drove to the Zilker Botanical Garden where we initially had this nice view of the Austin skyline. Notice the nicely clear sky two days after the solar eclipse.

A Red Admiral butterfly sat nicely upon some flowers.

The most interesting part of this botanical garden for me was the Cretaceous section where all specimens were either identical to Cretaceous plants, or descendants of Cretaceous plants. Along certain sight lines you could almost image walking through dinosaur territory.

Near the visitor center a small terrarium housed carnivorous plants, including Venus Flytraps seen below.

After the botanical garden the bus drove through the LBJ ranch, the least interesting part of the entire tour for me. We did see LBJ's birthplace and his grave in the unpretentious family cemetery there. I was also surprised by great numbers of pecan trees growing in orchards on the ranch. In November the public can harvest pecans here in one gallon buckets.

As the day wound down, the last stop was the LBJ presidential library for which I had zero initial enthusiasm. It turned out the library was one of the best things we saw near Austin! On the first floor was a wonderful exhibit illustrating historical and cultural events during the course of LBJ's life. Much of it included events we actually lived through, so it was nostalgic to step through our youthful years again.

Apparently, Texans are quite fond of their native son, LBJ. In my youth I was not so fond of his Vietnam War policies. But Vietnam aside, he did an amazing amount of good things including the war on poverty, medicare, medicaid, the civil rights act, the voting act, headstart, PBS, and more. He was a strong supporter of NASA. It really is an amazing record of accomplishment, especially compared with how little gets done today. This large wall photo in the library shows LBJ signing the civil rights act in 1964.

Also on the first floor was a wonderful exhibit illustrating the history of American music from the 1700's up to Taylor Swift, including genuine articles of clothing, musical instruments, and original lyrics owned by iconic performers. I was particularly interested in the pictures of the Victrola which looked identical to one my grandparents owned. When I was about 5 years old I used to see this device in one room of our rented house.

The Victrola played old fashioned thick disc records like these.

Another display featured what could fairly be claimed as the first rock and roll record - The Fat Man by Fats Domino. This was recorded in 1949 when I was about one year old. I've had this as the first song on my oldies playlist for years.

The library was our last stop in late afternoon. Closing time was near. As time ran out we hurried up to the second floor where I found another great exhibit of LBJ's political life with more nostalgic material from political campaigns and cultural events. Also on the second floor was a portrait collection of all presidents and their first ladies from George Washington to Obama. I could have spent much more time in this place, but the library was closing and we had to hurry back to our bus.

Our Texas tour was over. We did see lots of interesting things, but it was a major disappointment to see only thick clouds instead of a total solar eclipse!