Sheila365

Barton Springs, Lake Travis, and a shanghai’ed uncle.

Days 3, 4 and 5 of our visit with family brought a trip to Barton Springs, Sno-beach snocones, a brewery crawl, an overnight at anchor on the boat on Lake Travis, and pizza night. The weekend was filled with swimming, diving and floating. A brother-in-law from Houston drove to Austin and he spent the night with us on the boat – whether he knew he was going to or not 🙂

I love the chance to spend this time with family. Keeto will be devastated when everyone leaves tonight.

This is a shot from the southern end of Barton Springs pool, looking north to the Austin skyline. The background has changed much since Mary Doerr captured the same vantage point years ago – the Capitol building is now obscured by skyscrapers. But the pool in the foreground is exactly the same.

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Meat-o-rama.

My sister and her family are visiting us for a week. We are having more fun than six people should. We tubed the San Marcos River today, and hit the Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood for dinner on the way home. Delicious.

Photo credit to Fran. 🙂

Sweaty betties.

I went birding and hiking today with my friend, Doray. We started early, at Reimer’s Ranch Park, and then did the guided tour of the canyon and grotto at Westcave Preserve. After that, we went back to Reimer’s to hike their River Trail.

Let me just say, “Whoo dogie, it was HOT!” Whew! 100 degrees or so. But it was beautiful, we did see lots of birdies, and we enjoyed a lovely day in our hill country. Pretty good day.

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Sprinkler time.

The hummingbirds love to cool off in the spray from the sprinkler.

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Welcome back, Celis!

We attended tonight’s Grand Opening for the new Celis Brewery. Celis opened in 1992 producing award winning local craft beer. Sadly, it closed in 2000. But the original founder’s daughter worked hard to make todays re-opening of Celis Brewery a reality, 25 years from the original brewery’s birthday. Cheers!

Peep show.

This may be the worst quality photo I have posted to date. But, it’s capturing the moment that counts, right? 🙂

These are a few of the birdies that were running around on the skylights over our back room yesterday afternoon.

Pizza and beer.

We met up for lunch today with old friends that were visiting Austin for the day. Pinthouse Pizza did not disappoint. Lots of local beers on tap. Check them out!

A mess o’martins.

I checked out a Purple Martin Party tonight – a spectator event coordinated by the Travis Audubon Society. Every Friday and Saturday night in July, from 8-9:30pm, people gather on the lawn outside the Texas Land & Cattle restaurant to watch tens of thousands of purple martins roost at sunset. These guys are done nesting and breeding and are on their way south to complete the annual migration cycle of life. They tell me that by the end of the month there may be hundreds of thousands of them.

How can one possibly photograph this event? Here is one shot I took, a small portion of the overall scene. Can you count them?

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Her third Fourth.

Our niece, Laura, has been visiting us for the last few days. Yesterday afternoon we headed out to the lake to spend the night at our marina with a group of friends. Today we enjoyed a great sail up and down the lake. We figured that this is the third 4th of July that Laura has spent with us on Lake Travis. I’m looking forward to the next one.