Dinner on the lake. On a boat.

We enjoyed wine, food and friends on Lake Austin the other night.

Lakeside homes

We took a walk in a west Austin neighborhood the other day and saw these homes across Lake Austin. Talk about lake views!

Watery Drive

This house on Lake Austin has a garage...and a boat garage.

And Now for a River Picture

Just in case we need a reminder of some of the beauty of Austin, here's a view of t Lake Austin from Mount Bonnell, looking down river toward Tom Miller dam (you can just see it).

Hill Country and Lake Austin

I think this photo (thanks to my friend Jackie for it) epitomizes the landscape of the Hill Country with the Little Colorado River (we just call it the Colorado here) meandering through the hills of scrubby vegetation with various dams controlling its flood fury and providing lakes for recreation.

Home with a View

Some friends of ours are selling a home with magnificent views of Lake Austin. Especially at sunset. Thanks to Jackie for this picture.

Lakeside view

Yesterday, I went to our club to work out and have lunch. As I was leaving, I noticed a couple in a small boat fishing (they are in the middle here). Since my iPhone was handy, I whipped it out and took this shot. I thought maybe our compatriots on these boards would like to see a photo from sunny Austin. The weather-casters are predicting snow for us today, though. From the looks of things outside, I doubt it will happen.

Sports Hubris

On Lake Austin there is a property that appears to have its own baseball diamond. I think that's a tennis court on the left. Surely this isn't a private home! I always thought it would be great to have your own tennis court but they require a lot of space. But a baseball diamond?

Lakeview property

Here is a shot of Lake Austin we took from the home where we attended the pumpkin carving. Sometimes people who have never been to Texas are surprised when they see how many lakes and rivers we have in our terrain.

Coffee and a View

Sunday we were out in our car doing an errand so we decided to go to Mozart's Coffee Roasters on Lake Austin (on the boulevard and on the lake). It was hot out but a lot of people chose to sit outside and enjoy the view of the lake. Mozart's is next door to Abel's.

Lake Austin Dining

This is the deck at Abel's on Lake Austin where we had lunch the other day. A venerable campus bar (Cain and Abel's) has opened this outpost next to the always overcrowded Hula Hut. Lots of al fresco dining if you can take the heat. (We dined inside on this steamy day.) We've never dined at the lakeside restaurants over here on Lake Austin Boulevard very much but they are popular with Tarrytown denizens and college kids.

A Bee Cs of Relaxation

In an area that used to be on a river tucked deep in a working ranch, there is a spa that is wonderful in its tranquility. Tranquility has a steep price, though, and Lake Austin Spa is no exception. FFP and I bid on a two-night stay with all meals (and a massage each) at a charity auction back in June and were surprised to find that we had purchased it. We promised ourselves that we would treat ourselves after we crawled out of the moving morass of the summer. We had a wonderful and tranquil time. While we were walking around the garden I snapped this busy bee. He was oblivious of me while he did his duties.

The spa is wonderful and manages to maintain a serenity beyond belief even though the ranch is a huge housing and urban development now and the river is a lake with skiers and fishermen. I got good some good exercise, had a great massage, ate delicious portion-controlled calorie-reduced food and read and lounged. If you want the perfect place to be when the stock-market takes a deep dive, this is it.

By the way, we've had pictures of and near Lake Austin before but it is a long and winding lake so, for example, the bee's home is probably sixteen miles as the hawk flies down the lake to the dam that creates the lake which is much nearer Mt. Bonnell, our club and such. (And it's almost twenty by car on the roads you have to take.)

High and Dry

Every winter they lower Lake Austin, the second lake in the series of man made lakes on the Little Colorado, to let docks be repaired and vegetation be cleared. These boats are high and dry and, if you look carefully, you can see a line of birds at the new water's edge doing their best to clean up what the lowered water has exposed for them to eat. It was gray and drizzly and gloomy and cold yesterday and the mud added a grim note here.

Scenic Drive

Most of us don't use Mt. Bonnell Road as a thoroughfare but even when we do drive it and our jaws drop as Lake Austin peeks out and greets us on the twists and turns and ups and downs, we can't snap a picture because it is a perilous drive. On Sunday I went on a walk with my friend and her standard poodle. Afoot I snapped the view from the road at the intersection of Mt. Bonnell Drive and Mt. Bonnell Road as if you were driving toward 2222. This is a scenic drive for visitors even if you don't climb the hundred or so steps to the park. With this drive and going down the hill toward Capital of Texas Highway your guests should have enough scenery to work up an appetite for barbecue at County Line.

I was going to post this here today but decided to put it in my personal blog. But since we introduced Karen Kuykendall here I wanted to note her passing in ADP.

Paddle Wheel

FFP and I went on a boat on Lake Austin the other night with some wine-loving buddies. We sipped a variety of good juice while eating some fajitas and coconut shrimp on a stick catered by Hula Hut. The boat is the paddle wheeler The Commodore (which FFP showed you docked at our club). The picture is, of course, a detail of the Paddle Wheel. We actually boarded at the public dock near Hula Hut and the Tom Miller Dam (which is the dam that creates Lake Austin).

Lake Austin and Pennybacker Bridge

I climbed up the hundred or so stone steps to the top of Mt. Bonnell and then down the rock path to snap pictures yesterday. The day was a bit hazy but you can see the very full lake and the Pennybacker Bridge which conveys Capital of Texas Highway (aka Loop 360) across the lake. Austin sits on the geological fault (not active) that defines the Texas Hill Country from the Texas Coastal Plain. Hence we have hills on the west side of town and different soil, flatter land and taller trees on the east side. A lot of people think of Texas and think of desert high plains from cowboy movies. We do have that out west (pretty far from here actually) but we have a startling amount of other geography from mountains to swamps and, of course, a long coastline in the Gulf of Mexico. I like Austin's geography, though. The hills are fine and dramatic with their scrub vegetation and the live oaks and other plants that begin right in town are fine, too. As you may remember from prior geography lessons, Lake Austin is a man made lake formed by a dam on the Colorado River (which we sometimes call the Little Colorado to distinguish it from the from the river draining the Western slopes of the Rocky Mountains). Those homes hugging the shoreline with boating access to the lake are very expensive these days.

Top of Mount Bonnell on a Sunday

Before going to our club to work out yesterday, I made a trek up the steps to the top of Mount Bonnell, which overlooks Lake Austin. This vantage point yields one of the best views of the lake in town. Lake Austin, of course, is part of the system of manmade lakes formed by the dams on the Colorado River and it winds through the middle of our fair city.

As Linda points out in her comment, ours is the informally-monikered "Little" Colorado River, not the big daddy that starts in Colorado and goes to California.

The Commodore At Our Club

I took some photos Saturday morning at Westwood Country Club. That's where Linda and I go every day to work out, play tennis (well, Linda does that), eat, swim, sun, and socialize. As you can see, it's located on Lake Austin and it's the in the center of town, which makes it convenient.

Through the trees you can see our club's boat docks and just beyond them is the grand old Riverboat Commodore which has been an Austin institution since I was a kid. One of our members owns it, docks it at the club and makes it available for party cruises.

It always tickles us when people from out of state come to Texas and are amazed at all the water and vegetation we have in our environs. No-- it's not all a desert here!

Historical note-- my dad actually built these boat docks back in the fifties. They've held up pretty well!