Austin for the Holidays

We got ourselves to Austin, Texas for Christmas and New Year. I’m pretty sure we knew last Summer that we wanted to be there for the holidays and so we booked a spot near Lake Travis, about 30 minutes from downtown Austin. Seems my research paid off again and resulted in a great campground. It even had some nice cabins to rent onsite which made having Megan for 3 nights a breeze. La Hacienda RV resort had all the amenities we needed in a great location. Mollie was quite happy with all the dog parks!

So Austin has the popular slogan “Keep Austin Weird” and we looked everywhere for the abundance of weirdness. The weirdest part about Austin we noticed was the topography. Texas has been brown and flat and, generally speaking, with long stretches of road without even a curve. Not Austin at all. Austin has cool curvy and even hilly roads with names that start with RM (ranch to market) and FM (farm to market). Wikipedia says:
Residents of Austin are known as Austinites.^[17] They include a diverse mix of government employees, college students, musicians, high-tech workers, digital marketers, and blue-collar workers. The city’s official slogan promotes Austin as “The Live Music Capital of the World”, a reference to the city’s many musicians and live music venues, as well as the long-running PBS TV concert series Austin City Limits.^[18][19] The city also adopted “Silicon Hills” as a nickname in the 1990s due to a rapid influx of technology and development companies. In recent years, some Austinites have adopted the unofficial slogan “Keep Austin Weird“,^[20] which refers to the desire to protect small, unique, and local businesses from being overrun by large corporations.^[21] Since the late 19th century, Austin has also been known as the “City of the Violet Crown“, because of the colorful glow of light across the hills just after sunset.^[22]

As usual, we did the Hop on Hop off double decker bus for the history and lay of the land. The Capital building and grounds were beautiful and we returned there for a walk about.

Wikipedia describes it best here:

The Capitol building is surrounded by 22 acres (8.9 ha) of grounds scattered with statues and monuments. William Munro Johnson, civil engineer, was hired in 1888 to improve the appearance of the grounds. By the time the first monument, commemorating the Heroes of the Alamo, was installed in 1891, the major components of Johnson’s plan were in place. These included a “Great Walk” of black and white diamond-patterned pavement shaded by trees. The four oldest monuments are the Heroes of the Alamo Monument (1891), Volunteer Firemen Monument (1896), Confederate Soldiers Monument (1903) and Terry’s Texas Rangers Monument (1907), and these flank the tree-lined Great Walk.^[20] In the spring of 2013, ground was broken for the Texas Capitol Vietnam Veterans Monument; dedication took place on March 29, 2014.

A granite monument of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol was the topic of a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court case, Van Orden v. Perry, in which the display was challenged as unconstitutional.^[21] In late June 2005, the Court in a 5-4 ruling declared that the display was not unconstitutional.

We found The County Line BBQ for some GREAT smoked meats and Texas sides. I don’t remember what happened after that so I’m sure I was in a food coma.

And the next day Megan came to town ready to explore. The photo and video quality went up by leaps and bounds after Megan’s arrival. 

When Megan landed, we headed right into downtown Austin for the afternoon. The weather was perfect for twirling. We walked the Capital grounds and wandered through some hootie Christmas decorations. Austin has cool “neighborhoods” with unique features like art and food truck alleys.  Once we headed back to the campgrounds and got Megan checked into her cabin, I cooked up a feast of grilled steaks and crab legs for our Christmas Eve dinner and we were all pleasantly plump with happiness.

Christmas morning was spent in Yolo exchanging gifts and rememberingChristmas morning stories of past. Megan had picked out a great Christmas Brunch spot with live Jazz and a cool rooftop overlooking the Austin skyline. We all loved it. I think we came back and got in the hot tub for a while…which is a luxury at this particular campground. 

The day after Christmas was Mom/Daughter day while Mollie and I gave Yolo some much needed attention. The Colbert’s seemed to have hit the town in perfectly orchestrated Colbert fashion. They came back with big smiles on their faces and were slightly interested in my accomplishments. 

The next morning, while the Colbert’s were heading to the airport, Megan’s flight was canceled. They were able to figure it all out and get her home later that evening so that could have been much worse.

Once Christmas was over, we readied ourselves with pre New Years stuff since our departure from Austin was on the 2nd. I was pleasantly surprised when my friend of many years; perhaps one of my first client/friend combo peeps, Shana, reached out saying her and husband Andy were heading into Austin and let’s eat some BBQ and catch up! YAY! Being travelers, familiar faces are rare. I love it! Full bellies and big smiles with friends and family are a gift that we never want to take for granted. 

When I researched “secret Austin”, I found this entire listing of candlelight concerts that featured solo pianists arranging their own renditions of well known artists for an hour in a candlelight setting in an old historic mansion. RIGHT UP MY ALLEY! So the night we went, an amazingly talented doctoral student from The University of Texas played an hour of Coldplay hits. We loved it!

We spent New Years Eve opening our memory jar. For those of you that don’t know, we collect memories every year in a giant jar. These can be anything from hand written notes to actual ticket stubs and boarding passes. Either on New Years Eve or New Years Day we pop a bottle of bubbly and take turns reaching in the jar and pulling and memory out to discuss. It’s so much fun and we laugh and cry and relive moments from the year. Last year, this activity was painful for me. I remember the day we opened the memories, I was down in the dumps. This year the jar was packed! It took a full 5.5 hours (including breaks) to discuss our year. What an awesome year!

 We ended the year at a fancy downtown Austin steakhouse for a fitting celebratory meal and talked about our successes of 2021 before the New Year. We are so blessed to be living our best lives going into 2022.

We spent New Year’s Day packing up the rig for travel to Abilene. I cooked us a yummy meal and packed up the outdoor kitchen in sunny 80° before temperatures plummeted to 29° for our Sunday morning departure. BRRRR. Our quest to see if we can be 4 season travelers continue. We are learning how to layer! Stay tuned and Happy New Year from CoBro+1 in Yolo and the Toad.