A Few of the Many Faces of Austin

A week ago we moved just 10 miles to Oak Forest RV Park in East Austin, TX. We're spending a month here, it's somewhat quieter than our previous location but still an easy drive (depending on time of day) into town if we want to visit the city.

Texas is still challenging us with wintery weather, though it's changed from days that can't get out of the 30's to days of wet, wet, wet; be it a slight drizzle all day long or 2" of rain in 48 hours. We're looking forward to several rain-free days this week!

Right across the street from our RV park is Green Gate Farms. It's primarily a CSA, but also has a three-days-a-week (supposedly) farm stand. We walked over one day to check out the farm stand but it wasn't happening and we couldn't get any answers...but we did get some photos. We'll try the farm stand again on a sunny day, perhaps we'll get lucky then!

Barn cat.

Green Gate Farms has a bunch of happy looking Berkshire hogs.
They were very curious about us.

One misty day we needed to get out of the RV no matter how wet we got. We headed over to the Roy G. Guerrero Disc Golf Course near downtown Austin and proceeded to play this terrific course in the damp. We had it all to ourselves on this wet weekday, it's a beautiful course with some very long holes but not too much undergrowth to hide your discs.

I liked the contrast of brilliant green grass, brown trees, gray sky.
Soon all the trees will be leafed out, providing welcome shade from the Texas sun (that we haven't seen much of yet!).

We finally got a sunny day and did some walking downtown and came across the Hope Outdoor Gallery. This public space is open to all muralists, graffiti artists and community groups who want to paint positive messages in a public space.

Visit this space on a regular basis for an ever changing feast for the eyes.

Hans' longtime friends Ashley and Lila have lived in Austin for years. We've gotten together for dinners at our homes a few times already and one cold, sunny day recently Lila was able to join us on a hike at McKinney Falls State Park. We hiked the 2.8 mile Onion Creek Loop, saw lots of birds and checked out the falls, what a great day!

Hans and Lila at the upper falls.

Someone painted this detailed drawing in a hole in the falls!

Obligatory turtle pic!

Deep holes abound in the limestone bed of Onion Creek.

The lower falls.

Austin is a music city, you can find tons of live music any night of the week and with SXSW coming the number of musical events is astounding. Thousands of musicians will perform over the next few weeks at both official and unofficial SXSW venues, day and night. Not being night owls, early shows make us happy so you can be sure we'll catch a few shows over the next couple of weeks. We happened to catch an early evening show at a funky dive bar, the Carousel Lounge, recently.

Circus themed decor makes this dive bar an interesting venue.

With two sunny days in a row we figured some trail hiking was in order; we hoped the trails wouldn't be too muddy at McKinney Roughs Nature Park. We hiked seven of their 18 miles of trails with very little mud, good rolling terrain, lots of pretty forest and a few birds along the Colorado River portion.

Some of the pecan trees have been dated to around 200 years old!

Fossilized oyster shells were abundant along the Yaupan trail.

Good birding along the river.

Walking along the river we could see the high water line had once been head high!
Trees were just beginning to bud, this view will be very different in a few weeks - all green!

We've got a decent site at Oak Forest RV Park, the oak tree next to our rig is just beginning to leaf out and will look completely different by the time we leave. The annual rodeo begins in just a few days and this park is just down the road from the rodeo grounds so it is fully booked for the next couple of weeks.

Pull through site #16.

Stay tuned for more adventures in Austin!