Austin, Texas

Before heading off to Milan, Mark and I spent a long weekend at my parents' new home in Austin. Straight from the airport, my parents headed toward Driftwood, Texas - home of the Salt Lick. The Salt Lick is famous for their barbecue and, as I found out, rightly so. It's BYOB but we came prepared with a cooler of beers to complement the brisket, ribs, and homemade barbecue sauce.


From there, we didn't waste any time in working off the delicious lunch. Hamilton Pool is part of a nature preserve and sometimes functions as a swimming hole, depending on bacterial levels. Sadly for us, it was not a swimming day, but after a short hike to the pool we were able to climb around and explore the rocks.

There's a 45-foot waterfall that fills the pool, which was formed thousands of years ago when the dome of an underground river collapsed due to massive erosion.


Saturday afternoon, we toured the Texas State Capitol building. It's the largest state capitol building in the U.S. (everything is bigger in Texas) but smaller than the U.S. Capitol. The rotunda at the Capitol is a whispering gallery - supposedly you can whisper to a friend standing on the other side of the room, and they can hear you. The tour was a bit too crowded to test it out for ourselves, but the University of Virginia had a similar whispering wall that worked, clear as day.

After touring the Capitol, we headed over to the University of Texas to visit the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential library. My mom was skeptical and didn't understand why I wanted to go but I think everyone enjoyed themselves in the end. There were a number of really interesting exhibits and while the museum didn't shy away from Vietnam War talk, they also went into a great deal of detail about LBJ's work in passing civil rights bills and other work toward social movements. My favorite part? The animatronic LBJ statue (below) of LBJ at his farm telling jokes. I bet they don't have anything like that at other presidential libraries!

On our last full day, we rented a boat and headed out to Lake Austin. We had wonderful weather and great views of the extravagant lakefront properties and the dam.

After grilling out back at the house, we had a little entertainment during dinner. My parents had promised wildlife and they weren't kidding - a whole family of deer came to hang out in the front yard. They stuck around even when I came out to take photos!


It was a wonderful visit, and we're already looking forward to heading back.