Wordless Wednesday: new babies!

The exotic and the familiar in A-Town

Here's something you don't see every day when you look up into a tree in South Texas...

...but, then, Austin specializes in things you don't see every day in lamer parts of the state.

After our viewing and playing with the art installations at Laguna Gloria, that I told you about in my last post, we stopped by a nearby park, Mayfield Park and Preserve. Specifically, to see the peacocks! 

And they were spectacular, as I guess they can't help but be.

Even when they're not all fanned out, it seems:

But the small park has other charms as well. From lovely, lovely flowers of all kinds, like this one,...and these...

...and even some other neat animals. Can you spot the teeny-tiny turtle?

Turtles are the familiar in my title. (Does anyone remember these guys?) Who wants to bet we might eventually see a peacock on the river?

Mayfield even has medieval-looking towers! Is there anything cool that Austin doesn't offer weekend visitors?!

Multi-cultural

Everyone knows that Austin is a hip cultural hotspot. And last weekend we got to sample some of the varieties of culture on offer there with our hip, cultured kiddos.

First on tap (no pun intended, although when you're out with these beer-snobs, there's always something on tap) was the Great American Pastime...

...college style. Long-time readers of this blog will remember my much-enjoyed visits to the Junior College World Series. So it was nice to get to hear that "tink" of aluminum hitting horsehide again.

The UT Longhorns have won a few series of their own, as signage proudly pointed out...

But they weren't so lucky this weekend, losing all three games to TCU, including the middle one that we saw. They were in first place in the conference when we arrived, but probably not by the time we left. However, the game was fun, the weather perfect, and the company delightful, so the score didn't matter all that much.

We did feel a little out of place, not wearing burnt orange, which was the color of choice for a majority of our fellow fans...

...but fortunately that was not held against us. As you can see, we had great seats, right behind first base. Where, we realized after an inning or so, we were pretty close to a celebrity...

note also bright orange "dirt" around the bag

Well, at least a celebrity's relative. That's Kacy Clemens, one of the sons of the [in]famous Roger. He's a freshman at UT, his pop's alma mater. Pretty Kool. (All of Clemens' sons have odd names that start with K, the scorekeeper's symbol for a strikeout. Which he was pretty good at doing to opposing batters for a pretty long time.)

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Thanks to those of my readers who don't consider baseball high culture for bearing with me so far. The rest of the post might be more to your liking.

Saturday we made a return visit (it was a return for me at least) to the Laguna Gloria branch of the Contemporary Austin, a modern art museum that featured installations by Charles Long both there and at their downtown location. Both were very interesting and entertaining.

I was at Laguna Gloria just about a year ago, but the fun sculptures we saw this time are not permanent fixtures there. The installation as a whole was called "Pet Sounds" (not, it seems, totally unrelated to the Beach Boys album of the same name), very appropriate since the oddly shaped metal objects made all kinds of interesting (and sometimes alarming!) sounds when touched. (Except for the gray one on the right, which seemed to be out of order.)

Unfortunately I can't reproduce the sounds, but I hope you can get an idea of the fun nature of the sculptures...I didn't see anyone, of any age, touching them and not smiling with child-like delight!

silent pink...bubble gum?

Travis makes bubble music

Henry and friend

we think the pipes had something to do with the sound production

a duet

Of course the grounds are lovely even without the fun art, and their permanent items are cool, too...

...as well as Nature's contributions to the scene...

A good time was had by all!

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Later that afternoon, Henry and I used our two-for-one ticket to see the Long installations at the downtown museum, and were well-rewarded for foregoing our afternoon naps.

The small museum has two floors and there were related, but also strikingly different, installations on each.

Downstairs were some fascinating and beautiful plastic pieces representing icebergs...

Beyond their striking beauty, they were doubly interesting because of how they were made. The artist took random datasets (for example, 40 years of monthly gold prices, numbers of unprovoked fatal shark attacks since 1900, number of Lamborghinis sold since 1990, for example; like I said...random!) and somehow used a 3D printer to generate the neat shapes you see here from these sets of numbers. 'Way cool!

I stooped down a little to show a more edge-on view

Then, upstairs was an extensive black-lit landscape of more ice-berg-looking objects, but with smoother contours. They were covered with jersey-like sheets (and you could sit on them) and lit by a varying levels of illumination from two video screens showing interesting video effects...more really beautiful and interesting stuff!

The museum building itself is simple in its design, but quite attractive. I was taken by these little green window-like apertures...here seen from the inside...

...and here from out on the street...

Trés hip, non?

That's a long enough post for today, but I've left out yet another attraction (not to mention a run-down of all the hip food consumed). I'll save that for next time.

Wordless Wednesday: what else can I say?

Back on a river

What with trips, an unusually cool spring (which I'm not complaining about), prodigious amounts of pollen, etc., it had been quite a while since I'd been paddling.

So I was glad to be able to get back in the kayak seat last weekend. 

In addition to some remarkable wildlife sightings (more about this later), the flowers were pretty spectacular. Lots of bluebonnets along the roads leading to our put-in, and then these lovely "arrangements":

I was particularly taken with the vibrantly colorful poppies...

At the other end of the size scale, I enjoyed these lovely little blue guys, too...

I didn't see nearly as many turtles as on our last paddle, but this rather healthy specimen has to be one of the largest I've ever seen on our local rivers:

But that's not the wildlife I was referring to above. 

You'd be right in guessing that birds needing that large a nest would be impressive specimens. And indeed they are. Our national bird, in fact.

These are two juveniles that haven't quite learned to fly yet. (Henry has a better picture of one of them flapping his/her wings here.) Unfortunately we never saw the parents, but, what a treat to see the young 'uns!

Although the trip was a little longer than I usually like to take (justifying a very lazy recovery day on Sunday), it was great fun. The weather was perfect: air not too hot but river water just cold enough to be refreshing. And the spring river scenery can't be beat...

Out and about in Phoenix

I want to finish up my Phoenix-Spring Training posts with a miscellany of interesting glimpses of the town. We weren't there for long, but got to see a good bit of the city and enjoyed the mild weather and the occasionally quirky sights.

it's pretty easy to tell where they irrigate...view from the plane on the way in

nice view of downtown from the plane on the way home...
the stadium is what I still call "the BOB"*

we had an appropriately cool rental car...

...that was almost the same color as the green cabs we saw all over

I thought the "Sky Harbor" airport was very nice...
here's my nephew riding the tram to the light rail with me upon my arrival

street art on the platform...waiting for the light rail (the real feet are mine)

more neat public art...a stylish caduceus

handsome church and ubiquitous palm trees

nice fountain in Scottsdale

and a very nice restroom...who knew they have awards for things like this?!

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*It's now the really lame-sounding Chase Field, since Bank One got taken over. Bank One Ballpark gave it a so much snappier nickname, don't you think?

Wordless Wednesday: scary sky at the bus stop

Phoenix Phood

A great part of any vacation, no matter how mini, is getting to eat out a lot, sampling the local cuisine without fear of weight gain...since vacation calories don't count, right?

Yes, we decided to give In-and-Out Burgers another chance in Arizona. You might remember that we were singularly unimpressed with our visit to one in California last summer. Happily, we discovered that our previous experience must have been an aberration. Our meal in Tempe was really scrumptious. In addition to this yummy cheeseburger and exquisitely crispy fries, Joan's chocolate shake was one of the best I've ever tasted.

This particular In-and-Out-let definitely deserved the long lines and heavy crowds we saw there. The crew was kept hopping, but they sure managed to keep the quality up...

These burgers were the last meal we had in the Phoenix area. Our first was a delicious Ariz-Mex experience at the Mariscos Playa Hermosa [seafood beautiful beach] where we also were able to eat outside in the very pleasant evening air.

I decided not to go for the seafood specialties of the house, but rather chose a Tex-Mex staple, in order to make comparisons with home. My enchiladas verdes weren't bad at all, even if the sauce was a little spicy and the rice was un-fried...

One of our best meals was at the Morning Squeeze, a popular Scottsdale eatery not far from the Rockies stadium. Brunch before the game really hit the spot.

They specialize in a variety of types of Eggs Benedict; I chose the "Billy Bob Benny," which substitutes biscuits for English muffins and sausage for ham. Plus, look at all those hash browns ... YUM!

The half-inside, half-outside ambiance of this restaurant, as well as the general decor, was quite charming. We didn't mind having to wait for our table and the food was worth it. Here's a cute wall of mugs that greets you as you enter:

I unfortunately didn't get pictures of the ballpark food we feasted on, but since we had such good meals outside the parks, we didn't have to eat much inside. A delicious cup of noodles and veggies served as lunch at the Giants game, though, and I should have snapped a picture of that. On Sunday, after our Morning Squeeze brunch, we didn't have room for much at all at the Rockies game.

Given that I was traveling with my sister Joan, we naturally spent a fair amount of time in Starbucks, and I was glad, again, that they have such yummy pastries. Here was my Tuesday morning coffee cake:

A final nice meal was a surprisingly generous and delicious salad at the Phoenix airport. You know you've hit the jackpot, vacation-food-wise, when your airport meal is worth blogging about!