Austin and Johnsonville, Texas
April 2nd– April 3rd
We made a quick overnight stop in Austin, the Texas State Capital. We got in mid-afternoon Saturday so we went down to see the enormous pink-tinted capitol building. The story behind the funding of the capitol is pretty good. Texas wanted to build a new capitol building (this was in the late 19th century) but they didn’t have money. What they did have was land- so they offered up millions of acres of uncharted land in the northeastern part of Texas (referred to as the capital lands) to an investor who would fund the building of the new capitol. Some brothers from Chicago thought that it was a good investment opportunity so they made a bid to the state of Texas and got the land (this was before it had been surveyed or anyone had seen it.) Since the land was far from anywhere it was difficult to get people to inhabit it, so they used the land for cattle and built the largest ranch that ever existed. The statistics were impressive (in numbers of miles of barbed wire, cowboys, etc.) The ranch has long since closed and settlers inhabited the area, but the original investors never saw the benefit of their investment. Texas, in return, got the largest capitol building in the U.S.A. (It’s even bigger than the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C.)
We walked down to 6th Street, the heart of Austin’s live music scene where we grabbed a slice of pizza and beer and listened to some good indie rock in a little bar called “Friends.” It was still pretty early, so we had time to go to the riverfront where we ran into a crowd of people gathered next to the river. They were waiting to see the nightly flight of the Austin bats (apparently there are thousands of bats that live under a bridge.) The bats finally came out about ½ hour after sunset so it was hard to see them. We could just see the faint outlines as thousands of them went in search of food for the night. Fab and I were pretty wiped out from our long day and the heat, so we headed back to the hotel early.
The next morning when we packed up the car, we found a large 6-inch crack in our windshield. We couldn’t find where it had come from, but decided that since it was a Sunday we would wait a day or two before having it looked at, hoping that it wouldn’t get worse.
We did have an important stop on our agenda that morning- the REI store in downtown Austin. We needed to get some new backpacking gear for our upcoming trip to Big Bend. We were efficient shoppers: we bought a new hiking backpack (my last one was destroyed on our Asia trip), a backpacking tent, and two thermo rest mattresses in a quick 30 minute stop.
On the drive to Guadalupe State Park, we made a stop off in Johnsonville, Texas the hometown of former president, Lyndon Johnson. He and his wife donated some of their family land to establish a national historic site. You can visit his childhood home, some earlier family buildings and the Johnson ranch which was known as the Texas White House. The site gives you a real insight into how cattle ranchers lived at the beginning of the 20th century. There was also a good exhibition on the Johnson presidency…a president who lived in the shadow of JFK’s assassination and the Vietnam War, but also had an important role in Civil Rights legislation and the establishment of Medicare, Medicaid and some early environmental protection legislation.
Tags: BIG TRIP 2011, In English 2005-2006, Texas
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