My Austin<\/strong> experience wasn’t as epic as I had hoped for it to be.\u00a0 This was entirely my fault and not Austin’s, I think.\u00a0 I’m still kinda sick and low-energy, and I arrived at just the wrong time in terms of Kurt’s work schedule.\u00a0 I got here on Tuesday night, and his weekend is Monday \/ Tuesday, so he off to work in the late morning every day I was there.<\/p>\n I stayed for a too-brief three nights and two days. The first day I sampled the joys of downtown — the Whole Foods mothership main store, the independent bookstore and the rest of the scene in that vicinity, which is near Kurt’s Bikram studio and thus ground zero for his Bikram-centric life right now.\u00a0 The second day I biked around Zilker Park<\/strong><\/a> and across the river.\u00a0 I looked at Barton Springs Pool<\/a> getting its regular Thursday draining and cleaning, and that was about as exciting as it got.\u00a0 Kurt sez that the pool and the park in general is just the shit in their muggy Texas summer, and I believe him.<\/p>\n And that was it.\u00a0 I experienced no memorable music shows with up and coming indie bands, no painfully hip bars full of UT cuties, only one hipster coffee house.\u00a0 All I did was pull myself out a Nyquil haze in the late morning, futz around in the afternoon, go back to Kurt’s mom’s house to wifi and watch sports on tv, go to bed and do it all over again.\u00a0\u00a0 If I had been energetic I could’ve driven into town to meet Kurt after work and do some of that Austin After Dark stuff, but I just didn’t feel driving in then driving back out separately in two cars, so there you have it, it’s all on me!<\/p>\n Friday I tore myself away from the chance to maybe wake up and do Austin some justice.\u00a0 I would have hung out a day or two longer, to maybe outlast my cold and feel like being interesting for a change, but time’s a wastin!\u00a0 This is Friday morning, and two weeks from now<\/em> will be Christmas Eve, and I want to be at Martha’s by then.<\/p>\n Breakfasted with Kurt at the Galaxy Cafe.\u00a0 He went to pre-work Bikram, I went back to his house for a little more wifi, then I said goodbye to his mom and headed for the hills so to speak. I drove through Dripping Springs<\/strong>, which name seemed familiar, though I don’t know why.\u00a0 Sounds like it would be a fancy place, with spas and mudbaths, right?\u00a0 Nope, just another sleepy, dusty town like every other town around here..\u00a0 Then I drove through Johnson City<\/strong>, right past the state park which was Lyndon Johnson’s ranch on the Pedernales.\u00a0 Didn’t stop, but I’ll bet it was kind of interesting.\u00a0 Johnson comes up a lot nowadays. Seems crazy now, but before him the South was solid Democratic, all those old-school racist peckerwoods and obstructionist Senators were Democrats!\u00a0 Fast forward 50 years and the new-school racist peckerwoods and obstructionist Senators are pretty much the same people except they are solid Republican.\u00a0 All because Johnson did the right thing instead of the politically smart thing and got the Civil Rights Act passed.<\/p>\n Made it to my destination for the evening, Junction TX<\/strong> and South Llanos River SP<\/strong>.\u00a0 I’m back in the wide open spaces, where you gotta plan ahead, because actual towns with groceries and delis happen only every 50 miles or so.\u00a0 The map of Texas tells the story.\u00a0 The right (east) half is dense and busy looking and when you glance away it’s hard to find your place in all the busy-ness, just like a map of New Jersey or Florida.\u00a0 The west half however is spread out like Nevada or Montana; it’s easy to follow your route because there’s a half-inch of white space around it.<\/p>\n Also, there is no midwest down here!\u00a0 When I left the Gulf Coast on Monday afternoon I was in the Southeast.\u00a0 By bedtime I was in the cowboy country camping near the Brazos River.\u00a0 This is an inexact generalization, the Brazos has alligators, and I don’t associate alligators with the American west, but the dried-out rolling hills of mesquite and scrub oak sure looked west-ish to me.<\/p>\n South Llano River State Park<\/strong> – It turns out that every state has its own distinctive rituals of campground bureaucracy, and I keep getting caught up in foolishly assuming that the state of Texas for example, would want me to get a campsite in the same way as did the state of Florida or Louisiana.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s not even worth going through the details of tonight’s hassle, but I assure you it was annoying.\u00a0 However, once I decided to ignore my instructions and just camp where I wanted, the park was very, very nice.\u00a0 Just as the alligator<\/em> was the signature beast of my last park, the great American Wild Turkey<\/em> is the star of the show here.<\/p>\n The river, which is the only interesting thing in this arid chunk of land, is about 200 yards from the campground, but you are not allowed to walk to it from October to February, so as not to disturb the turkeys<\/em> … honest!\u00a0 When I got to my site there was a convocation of turkeys about 30 yards away, which was kinda cool.\u00a0 They were being rebels and hanging out in the human zone, which was unfair, since we humans weren’t allowed to hang out in the turkey zone.<\/p>\n Anyway, since I couldn’t walk to the river I popped open the bike (second night in a row!) and rode it back the 2-3 miles to the pretty little stretch of water I’d passed on the way into the park.\u00a0\u00a0 The river was clear, which is quite unusual out here in cow country, and at sunset it was quite beautiful.<\/p>\n I happened to wake up a little after sunrise, and my van was surrounded by turkeys<\/em>!\u00a0 I regret that I didn’t have the presence of mind to grab the camera, but I did watch them gobble and peck for about ten minutes until they wandered off, away from their protected zone.\u00a0 They’re very impressive birds.<\/p>\n After a little blog writing and van cleaning I decamped and drove the six miles back to Junction, where I would pick up I-10.\u00a0 There were two breakfast places in town, I drove past both and tried to divine from looking at the outside which would have the better breakfast on the inside.\u00a0 I chose poorly.\u00a0 Maybe all the restauratns in Junction are dreary grease palaces, but my place for sure was.<\/p>\n Even by my forgiving road standards it was very dull sausage and eggs, indifferently prepared and served.\u00a0\u00a0 I topped it off with the most seriously greaseball donut I’ve has this side of the Central Valley.\u00a0 I knew I should’ve just left it alone … but it looked so tasty under the display glass!. It is hunting season evidently, because the other diners were a parade of camo chic<\/em>!\u00a0\u00a0 First was a heavyset lady in baggy camo overalls that were really, really not a good look for her.\u00a0 Then came a city-looking camo foursome, the ladies in nice fitted camo jackets, one dude in the full camo overalls, and the other in this striking camo\/blue jean hybrid outfit that had to be seen to be believed.<\/p>\n Fascinating, but the road was calling, so I finished my donut, paid up and plugged into the I-10 traffic stream.\u00a0 I have been keeping careful track of my mileage, and it seems to really be true that I get two-ish miles less<\/em> to the gallon driving 75 mph vs 55 mph.<\/p>\n Today I am really back in the west – very western vistas: mesas, huge horizons.\u00a0 The pecans and scrub oaks of the rolling hills around Austin are gone, gone, gone – nothing but mesquite and rocks out here.<\/p>\n I exited at Fort Stockton<\/strong> to find the least ridiculously expensive diesel in town.\u00a0 On the way to wifi at the library (closed on Saturday = FAIL) I found a couple of sad little stations selling diesel for $3.19 rather than the $3.29 it was everywhere else in town.\u00a0 Wow, 10 cents times 18 gallons – big victory for me….\u00a0 Diesel pumps are nastier than gas pumps in general, and sometimes the bargain places are bargains because their pumps are screwed up in one way or another, and that was the case here.\u00a0 The pump was filthy and I had to go inside to pay, and the little ratchet on the trigger was gone so I had to hold the nozzle the whole time.\u00a0 Shoulda paid the extra $1.80 sigh…<\/p>\n I am happily investing in yet another Texas state park tonight.\u00a0 State parks are a little spendy, but hey, I’m here to see new places so I should live it up a little!<\/p>\n Balmorhea State Park<\/strong><\/a> – What a little hidden jewel of a place!\u00a0 A big<\/em> freshwater spring pops out of the ground here, and there’s been a big swimming pool built around it for the last half-century.\u00a0 I didn’t really get the whole concept when I checked in – I had confused the modest little lodging here with a fancier hotel at Fort Davis not too far away, and the awesome-ness of the spring wasn’t obvious from their web site.\u00a0 Basically the place looked pretty boring when I got there.<\/p>\n I settled into my site, and headed out (on foot not bike, it’s a small park), and it turns out to be really nifty!\u00a0 The outflow of the spring had been shunted into a tidy little drainage ditch back in the 30’s, but the state is now deconstructing that into wetlands.\u00a0 Then I wandered over to what turned out to be the pool.\u00a0 I could walk right in – no gate or gate-person!<\/p>\n This is Saturday night, and all the modest little lodging rooms are full because there is come kind of West Texas scuba hootnanny<\/em> going on!\u00a0 The community kitchen is hoppin’, and brawny white guys are mannin’ the grill!\u00a0 A Saturday night barbecue and night-time dive is gonna happen tonight!<\/p>\n As part of my general tendency to pack every possible thing for a trips, I do<\/em> have my rarely-used fins, snorkel and mask (and swim goggles!) packed away into a corner of one my overhead compartments.\u00a0 They have been untouched on this mostly cold-weather trip.\u00a0 If I had made it to Manatee Springs back in Florida I woulda used them, but as I discussed at length, I blew that particular destination.\u00a0 So I seriously thought about going back over there for the night swim, but I did not pack the bulky wetsuit I have left over from my Encinitas days, and the 40 degree November weather in my bare skin just didn’t seem like quite the thing.<\/p>\n I checked out at the ranger office in the morning (local campground rules!), and the nice Chicana ranger mentioned that I can stay and swim till 2 pm.\u00a0 I kinda laughed it off, but the other ranger tut-tutted me and pointed out that it was a pretty nice day.\u00a0 Indeed, it is bright and sunny, no wind and high 50’s, so I drove back to the pool, had a little talk with myself and decided what the hell, you’ll hate yourself later if you don’t, so don’t be a wimp!<\/p>\n So I broke out the hitherto untouched gear, bundled up in warm clothes and trunks and flip-flopped in there and did it!\u00a0 There was a gaggle of Sunday morning scuba-ers hanging out, being cool with their knowledgeable ways and wetsuits and tons of equipment, and I felt a little embarrassed as I padded by with my piddling amateur gear and pale, bare, goose-bumpy, old white skin.\u00a0 But I did it.<\/p>\n I usually have a little drama of getting wet inch by shivery inch<\/em>, but not today!\u00a0 I stripped off all my layers and jumped in!\u00a0\u00a0 It was warm enough in the water as long as you kept moving, and it was just an awesome experience!\u00a0 Fish, birds, and reptiles – schools of tetras, big-ass ole catfish – a couple of very cute long-necked turtles –\u00a0 and most captivating of all, diving ducks!<\/p>\n I had identified the ducks last night as Scaups, Lesser Scaups<\/a>, I think.\u00a0\u00a0 They are pretty cool looking on the surface, blackish heads and tails and a big solid panel of silver-white in between.\u00a0 But they are just stunning to watch swim.\u00a0 From watching them at the surface I had no idea how deep they swim just to do their everyday business.\u00a0\u00a0 This beautiful clear spring is about 150′ wide and 20′ deep, and as I was kicking around the surface I noticed a big roiling ruckus in the vegetation at the bottom about 20′ away.\u00a0 This turned out to be 6-8 scaups, who seem to forage in packs.\u00a0 They all dive at more or less the same time to the same area to root around for lunch.\u00a0\u00a0 Getting to and from the botton, with little bubbles streaming off their silver side-panels, they were the single coolest sight (well right up there with the sunset at Brazos Bend) I saw on the whole trip. So now I get the whole ecological niche thing a little better.\u00a0 Dabbling ducks nose around in the muck they are standing in (why I think of them as sh-t-sucking ducks), diving ducks expend more energy to go down a few feet for the next level of muck that the mallards are too lazy to go for, and of course fishing ducks spend a lot more energy but they get a much higher-energy diet.<\/p>\n So my two best experiences of the whole darned trip were at Texas State Parks … didn’t see that one coming.<\/p>\n Eventually I began to feel the chill, so I got out, dried off, even sunned for a few minutes on the diving board, then returned to the van, cranked up the heat and headed out for today’s adventure.<\/p>\n I am about 120 miles due north of Big Bend National Park<\/strong>.\u00a0 Actually I’m a little northwest.\u00a0 If I was going to do it, the place to turn south woulda been Fort Stockton.\u00a0 I’m sure it is super cool, and I plan to get there sometime, but as mentioned above, I don’t feel like I have the time to do it justice.<\/p>\n Also sad to say, that vacationing gringo (in Texas!) getting beheaded because he was mistaken for DEA or the competition\u00a0 kinda freaked me out.\u00a0 I can imagine my happy van being taken for a drug cartel delivery truck by the feds or another cartel, and I don’t like the picture.\u00a0 I will go into dicey situations if my gut tells me it’s ok, so when my gut tells me it’s not<\/em> ok to go into a situation, I will listen to that also.<\/p>\n So anyway, no Big Bend on this trip.\u00a0 However right here, where I got off I-10 at Balmorhea, is an allegedly scenic loop through something called the Davis Mountains<\/strong>, so I am gonna do that.\u00a0 The empty spaces of the west have kinda snuck up on me so that I am not well-stocked for food and I really want coffee after my invigorating swim, so I start out eagle-eyed for a breakfast place.<\/p>\n Forty miles later, I am at the junction at Fort Davis<\/strong>.\u00a0 There is a store didn’t have much in the way of prepared food, but it did have coffee and a factory made pecan pie (which was quite good!).\u00a0 Heading south at the junction it is another 42 miles to Marfa<\/strong><\/a>, which is somewhat famous as the gateway to Big Bend country for movie stars (No Country for Old Men\/There Will Be Blood).\u00a0 I was jones-ing for some civilization, so I pictured Marfa as some kind of desert Aspen, with trendy cafes with wifi and a high hipster-quotient, but then the reality of my surroundings and my schedule came back to me and I stayed on track, which in this case means turning west at the junction instead of south and heading into the Davis Mountains to finish the scenic loop.<\/p>\n Near here is Fort Davis Military Park<\/strong>, former Indian fighting outpost, which I drove through but did not take the time to visit.\u00a0 Also here is Fort Davis State Park<\/strong>, which has the CCC-built hotel mentioned above, and which I surely do want to return to someday, … but not today.<\/p>\n Signs started appearing – 23 miles to McDonald Observatory<\/strong>, 12 miles, 3 miles ….\u00a0 So I drove up the mountain to check it out, and it turned out to be semi-epic!\u00a0 Best of all for my immediate needs, it had a Visitors Center which was that slice of civilization I’ve been looking for but had no real hope of finding out here.\u00a0 There was an extra-nice museum cafe where I could order civilized non-desert-rat food.\u00a0 I ate, I\u00a0 got a lot of Christmas shopping done in the form of science-y gifts for the kids (and me!), learned a bit about el nino and la nina from the exhibits and drove around up to the actual observatories.\u00a0 There was a solar viewing scheduled today (I forget that it is Sunday) at one of their big-ass telescopes, but I didn’t feel like I had time to hang around.<\/p>\n Another ten miles or so down the road was a really nice looking state roadside pullover, at which I believe it is legal to camp.\u00a0 I added that to long list of things to do and places to stay when I come back this way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My Austin experience wasn’t as epic as I had hoped for it to be.\u00a0 This was entirely my fault and not Austin’s, I think.\u00a0 I’m still kinda sick and low-energy, and I arrived at just the wrong time in terms … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2010-east-coast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Saturday<\/h3>\n
Sunday<\/h3>\n