Day Eighty Two - Austin, Texas

Friday, March 16th. Barry and I went to Twin Falls in the morning. It's a path that runs along a river. Eventually you get to a wide part of the river and there are waterfalls! It was so cool.

Wildflowers. Ooooh.

Here's the river...

Ben jumped right in! I didn't think we would like the water because his legs are approximately four inches long. Maybe six. He loved it.

Barry frolicking in the waterfall.

Here's Barry jumping off the cliff. I'm sorry the video is tiny. I don't know why it won't get bigger. Can you tell what he does at the beginning? He casually throws our little doggy off the cliff first. 

Later that day, Barry went to make some art with Rita. She's one of my mom's good friends. They've known each other forever and is actually my dad's cousin. Rita makes beautiful sculpture and jewelry. Here are a few of her pieces. I pulled the pictures from her website here.

She offered to show us some of the things she does. Barry was super interested in making something so he went over a couple hours before I did. Rita helped him make a metal sculpture of a turtle. Here's Rita soldering something...

Showing Barry how to do it.

Here's a close up picture of the face of Barry's turtle. He's kind of scary, just like Barry's actual turtle.

After the art lesson, we went to see the bats. There's a bridge in downtown Austin where thousands of bats nest. At sunset, they all fly out to go hunting for bugs. In late summer, there are an estimated 1.5 million that fly out. It's the largest bat colony on the continent. While we were there, there were not very many yet. We could still see them, though, and it was very cool. Here are Rita, Susie, and I waiting on the bridge for the bats to come out.

Kayakers waiting for the underneath view of the bats under the bridge.

This is a bat tour.

Bicycling kayakers.

Even though we didn't see many, it was a beautiful night to be near the river. After the bats, we had really good Mexican food. I kind of wish I had some more right now.