Pecan Festival

The Pecan Street Festival came about because a local bunch of people decided to try and re-vitalize 6th Street and its surrounding area and businesses - known primarily nowadays for its music - about 30  years ago and has since become the largest arts and crafts festival in central Texas. The people who run it are a non-profit organisation and donate a substantial amount of the proceeds to both the City of Austin and local non-profit organisations alike.

It comes about twice a year - May and September - and is FULL of interesting art, sculptures, leather work, jewellery stalls to margarita and beer stands, tacos and burgers, live music in several locations and fun things for the kids to do and watch.

Take a look.....

These were all made from scrap metal and were FANTASTIC and very inexpensive!

They even catered for the animals in your life.......

........ and the sign next to the doggy chair reads Sit Means Sit!  The green chair is an average size camping chair - so this really is for the animal lover!
  
The local shops on 6th were open too although the majority of the bars (of which there are plenty) weren't until the evening as this is the major music scene for Austin and doesn't start 'jumping' until at least 10pm!

A good walk round, albeit a tad on the warm side. However, there was plenty to see and buy!

Day Trip back to Austin

Tuesday 13th and time to head back home, we had a great few days  in Corpus Christi but time to get back home, we looked around on the internet for some things to do and came up with some caves just out side San Antonio, the drive to Austin is around 260 miles and the caves where 160 miles so it meant we would do most the driving and then stop for a walk around some humid caves.

The Caves are called the Natural Bridge Caverns, due to the forming of a natural rock bridge. When we arrived it was right next to a safari park, we decide to give the safari park a miss as a lot of the reports on the internet where not good, so we headed off into the caves. Guided tour and it is about 3/4 of a mile walk and down about 180ft.

An hour later it was all done and we headed off home, got back about 16:00 - If you want to know more about the caves they are here:

Corpus Christ - Day 3

Monday 12th August - Today we decided to head into Corpus Christi itself and visit the science museum, it is right next to the USS Lexington aircraft carrier. First stop was in the harbor area, really nice place.

After walking around for 30 minutes and burning in the heat we decided to head off to the Science Museum. Well just our luck it, or should I say the girls luck, it was closed on Mondays!

Next door to it was a small water park, all the brochers we had seen said it was closed, hence very few people at the place, so we decided to stop there for the day, the girls had a great time.

 

Click on the pictures to enlarge
- USS Lexington

 

Corpus christi - Day 2

We arrived in Corpus Christi on Saturday 19th, we checked into the hotel and then headed out for a quick look around, we found the beach on Padre Island, it is a sandy beach and runs for a mile or so, you can also drive and park on the beach, which we did.

Sunday we got up early and purchased a sun shade 10x10 figured we may need it with temperatures up in the 100's, grabbed some lunch and ice and headed off to the beach, we parked in the car park - which was free - I found out that if you want to park on the beach itself you need a permit.

 The beach was pretty quiet and was windy but other than that it was great, the girls got some body boards and spent most of the day in the water.

By about 15:00 we'd had enough and headed off the beach and stopped for some crazy golf, Cae won as normal with the three of us coming in a close second. Great day had by all and on arrival back at the hotel I realized how much the wind can burn you, my face was bright red!

Trip to Corpus Christ

I took a week off work and we decided to go on a small road trip, I booked a hotel in Corpus Christi on air miles and we headed off on Saturday 10th August, the trip is only 250 miles so not that far, we decided to break the journey up and our first stop was 100 miles in at the Alamo.

The Alamo is in the middle of San Antonio and is a small monastery, you can Google the history behind it!

The monastery is a small building with a few artifacts within it, there is a list of the names of the people who tried to hold the Alamo, I was surprised at the number of English, Scots, Welsh and Irish.

Only takes an hour to walk round it but is worth the trip.

Corpus christi update to follow

Sand Storm from Africa

Over the last few days a sand storm has blown across the Atlantic and up into Texas, it is at high altitude and although a little hazy you would not neccesarily notice it, then when driving back from an evening out we came across this view, it looked really spectacular so I took a photo.

Schlitterbann water park

Saturday 3rd August and we took a day trip to New Braunfels Schlitterbahn water park, we purchased the tickets a day before hand from HEB and got a 3-4 dollar discount. Jez and Keith came with us and reading other reports on the web we decided to set off early so we get there before the gates opened.

It took us about 1 hour to drive there and we arrived about 9:15, park opens at 10:00, we wondered in and then queued waiting for the park to open, the advantage of getting their early was to get a picnic table and chairs, which we managed.

There are two parks, the old one and the new (East and West) we started in the old park and it was great fun, the kids loved the rides and the queues where small to begin with, the other good park was that the old park had great tree cover which gave plenty of shade. We managed 3 rides before the queues built up, some of the rides go for 15 minutes+ and even run from the top of the park down into the Comal river.

C

pictures courtesy of schlitterbahn web site due to the fact I could not carry a camera!

12:00 and we stopped for lunch, great thing about this park is you can take in a picnic which saves on cost. We did one more ride after lunch and then headed to the new park, you can get a tram, for free, between the two parks.

Pictures courtesy of schlitterbahn web site due to the fact I could not carry a camera!

The new park was disappointing, it has bigger rides, but no shade and as we did this in the heat of the day it was bad news. We did a couple of rides one that lasted about 20 minutes and one that just went round in circles.

Pictures courtesy of schlitterbahn web site due to the fact I could not carry a camera!

A good day was had by all and I will definitely look to buy a season ticket for next year. The good news is they are looking at building one in Cedar Park, which is where we live so that would be fantastic, however 2015 is the earliest opening date!