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.

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.

Life Surrounds You

"Life Surrounds You" is the motto for the condo complex we hope to live in starting sometime next year. Their sales office is on Rio Grande between 5th and 6th. The building itself is on Nueces. (Between Third and Fourth and, apparently, it will have the address 360 Nueces.) The picture was taken from Sixth Street looking south and a little east at the building from the sales office. This was taken last Sunday. Compared to the photo in the title layout you can see that it continues to rise. (I keep intending to replace the title photo. The 360 is taller and the Intel shell shown there is completely flattened and waiting for ground-breaking for a new Federal Court House. But I do like the energy the picture gives off.)

A little aside about street names. Most of the downtown east-west streets have numbers but used to be named for trees. (See here.) But the downtown north-south streets are named for some of the major Texas rivers. And the river streets that are further west are further south in the state. This means that they logically proceed from Rio Grande (where this sales office is) to Nueces, San Antonio, Guadalupe and Lavaca to Colorado. Here we are interrupted by Congress. Then we have Brazos, San Jacinto, Trinity, Neches and, finally, Red River. So, if you know the rivers you know a little street geography and if you don't you soon will by traversing the streets. Of course, there are more rivers than this in Texas. The Texas Parks and Wildlife department has given names to 11,247 rivers and streams! The Rio Grande is the longest and the next longest is the Red River. They form a good deal of the boundary of the state. Our Colorado River, however, is not the one that courses through the Grand Canyon but a smaller river that actually flows through Austin and is formed into a series of man made lakes. Town Lake is downtown. Lake Austin is the next one north and is shown here.