Bats

Austin, Texas has one of the most unusual and fascinating tourist attractions anywhere. Austin is home to the largest urban colony of Mexican free-tail bats in North America. Each night as the sun sets the 1.5 million bats emerge from under the Congress Avenue Bridge as hundreds of people line up on the bridge to see this spectacular site. The bats migrate each spring from central Mexico. Most of the colony is female, and in early June each one gives birth to a single baby bat, called a pup. The bats are welcome in Austin and actually generate more than 10 million dollars in tourist revenue each year. They eat more than 20,000 pounds of insects each night making Austin a great place to live. Bat Conservation International (BCI) has been instrumental in protecting and promoting the now famous Congress Avenue Bridge bat colony as an eco-tourism destination. We have been to the bridge on many nights and never tire of seeing this spectacular site.

a sculpture dedicated to the bats located on Congress Avenue

Duck Tour

If you have never been on a Duck Tour you are missing out on a lot of fun! When we lived in the Baltimore area we saw the Duck tour busses and I always wanted to go on one but we never did. A lot of cities have Duck tours. The “bus” is actually a military vehicle that can be driven on land or in water. We have been on the tour in Austin several times. It is so much fun that we would take guests on the tour when they visited us. First you are taken on a driving tour of the city then out to Town Lake where you splash right into the water! Whee! They make the entire tour very entertaining and give everyone a duck whistle. It is shaped like a ducks beak and quacks when you blow into it. It is definitely a group participation tour and so much fun. Below is a photo of me with my mother and step father when they came for a visit from North Carolina. It was a day my mother will never forget! (Right Mom????, hee...hee...hee...)

Buddy, Mom and Linda, blowing out "duck whistles" while on the tour

Ferrari's, Palace and Cathedral - update

Sorry folks, but I have been gone all day today and didn't have an opportunity to post a blog today before I left. Since it is so late I have decided instead of posting something today (other than this note), to do something different. I recently went thru some of my pictures that have been in storage and ran across the pictures I made of the ferrari's in Monte Carlo and of the palace and cathedral there. I have added the photos to the blog dated 13 April 2007 so you can go back and look at them. Or you can do a search...upper left corner of the page has a search box, type in Monaco and it will take you to the page where that post first appeared.... you will have to scroll down a bit to see the photos. Enjoy!

Austin City Limits

I guess every one has heard of the public TV show, Austin City Limits. The studio gives tours and we have been a couple of times. It is an interesting place to visit. To be in the audience for a show is harder than you would think. You can not purchase tickets. The tickets are all free and given away but you never know when or where. An announcement is made on the radio and you have to go to where they are being given out to get one. There is no advance warning. A select number of performers are scheduled for taping for future shows but also others are taped if a performer happens to be in Austin and ACL feels they would be good for the show. Below is a photo of me sitting on the ACL stage. No it is NOT filmed outside like it appears. That is a fake background of the Austin skyline. It is made out of a heavy carpet like material with a painting of the skyline on it and small holes with lights to make it look real. Fake trees are also in the studio to give it that “outdoor” feel.

Mexico

David and I have made several trips to Mexico. We’ve only been to border towns like Nogales, just south of Tucson and Ciudad Acuna, near Del Rio, Texas. David has also been to Matamoros on the border near Brownsville, Texas. I have never found these towns to be pleasing. They are interesting in the fact they are in another country and things definitely are different. These border towns are dirty and over crowded. I have always wanted to go deeper into Mexico, to some of the tourist meccas to get a feel for what that is like. On one trip to Ciudad Acuna we had planned to park on the US side and walk over into Mexico but we somehow got in a line going thru the gates and were unable to get out. So there we were driving around and we were both scared to death. The crazy thing is on the way back into the US we had to stop at the border and go thru customs. We had purchased a few souvenirs and we were questioned and as part of the search had to open the trunk and have it searched. We had a box of things in there and would you believe we had some apples and oranges that had been bought in the US in the box. The border patrol told us we were safe in the fact the fruit had USDA stickers on each piece or we would have been in trouble for trying to smuggle Mexican fruit into the US. How funny! Below are some photos from our previous trips.

David wearing the hat he had just purchased in Nogales, Mexico

Linda and David enjoy margaritas in Nogales, Mexico

a street in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico

the Crosby Hotel in Ciudad Acuna, we ate dinner in the hotel restaurant

David in Ciudad Acuna

Linda in Ciudad Acuna

the Rio Grande River looking at the mountains in Mexico

Oh Boy! Too late to turn around now, we're DRIVING into Mexico!

Luckenbach

Everbody’s somebody in Luckenbach!

If you like to stray off the beaten path, like David and I do, to visit sights seldom seen by the tourist crowds, then Luckenbach, Texas is a place worth visiting. This Texas town is located in the middle of nowhere with not much to see and it is like a trip back in time to a previous era when life was less complicated. Undoubtedly you have heard the song made famous by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings…. Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas … Luckenbach is little more than a bend in the road. A couple of shabby old buildings stand beneath a grove of live oak trees. A sign as you enter town says: "population 3", however we were told on one of our visits that 2 of those had died and the population was now down to only one. The Luckenbach post office/general store/saloon stands in the bend. Out back, folks sit on benches under the oak trees sipping Lone Star and Shiner Bock and listening to who ever is on stage. David and I have made numerous trips to Luckenbach. Our first trip was in the wintertime on a cold and rainy day. It was not exactly how I had envisioned Luckenbach would look. The image in my mind was more of an old western town, with stores, saloons, jail, etc. Imagine my surprise when we arrived only to find an old country store located in a bend in the road and THAT was Luckenbach! That day we bought a few post cards in the store and had them stamped with the Luckenbach postmark. Then we proceeded to go into the back of the store where there is a very small bar area. We sipped on a couple of Shiner Bock’s and listened to a couple of locals play their guitars and sing while we all sat around a pot-bellied stove to keep warm. It was magical! Other trips we made there were to buy gifts for people or to take visitors to experience what Luckenbach is all about. One time we arrived only to find that 1500 motorcyclists were there for the weekend. Talk about shock! Luckenbach is an interesting place and I would highly recommend if you are ever in the Texas hill country you must drop by and check it out.

that's my mother and step father sitting on the porch, we took them to Luckenbach when they visited us from North Carolina

Painted Churches

In central Texas in the town of Schulenburg you can take a self guided car tour of painted churches. David and I went on this tour and had a fun day exploring a new place. The churches were all Catholic and extremely ornate inside. I grew up in the Catholic church but I had never been to one like any of these before. If I took my own camera that day and made pictures I have certainly misplaced them somewhere. I can’t imagine not taking a camera on trip like this one. I had to look online to find the following photos so credit goes to whoever the photographers were for these pictures. I do have a very funny story to go along with this trip that I will share with you. At one of the many churches we stopped at that day there was a nice park-like setting with benches and restrooms on the church property. I noticed someone had left behind a disposable camera sitting on one of the benches. Being the silly person that I am I decided it would be a great idea to take the remaining pictures of David and myself. These were all very silly mind you… close-ups of our teeth, pics of us tugging our ears out with our tongues stuck out, a close-up of my eye, a photo of David’s prosthetic leg, you get the idea. Nothing vulgar or anything like that, just plain old silly. Whoever left it behind had already taken about 10 or so photos and I took about another 10 leaving a few incase the owner decided to come back for their camera. We both laughed until our sides hurt just thinking about the day when they had the pictures developed only to find 2 clowns had taken a bunch of photos using their camera. I placed the camera right where I had found it and we left. All along the tour at each church was a guest book for tourists to sign. Each time we signed we saw there had been a couple of others visiting that day as well but we never did run into any other visitors on our tour. You would think after going into so many churches that day I would have been a little kinder but my silly side over ruled once again! The churches include hand-painted murals, frescoes and other historic art and as I said before were very ornate in decorations. The outsides looked like a normal church but once inside it was an entirely different feel. This was a nice little day trip.

Montana

The KT Boundary is the demarcation line left behind when Earth was hit by an asteroid causing the planet to become dark and a lot of life died out. It is made up of iridium rich ash. Dinosaur bones can only be found BELOW the KT Boundary since once the explosion occurred there were no dinosaurs left alive. Some scientists believe it was this explosion that caused the extinction of dinosaurs, other scientists, including Joey, suggest that the extinction had begun long before the explosion and this was the final straw to wipe out what was left. There are only a few places in the world where the KT Boundary can be seen due to erosion, and one such place is on a private ranch near the ranch they were digging on when I was there.

the dark lines exposed by erosion here are the KT Boundary

Linda standing in a field on a ranch with the KT Boundary showing in the far background

Joey's passion in life is being a paleontologist. He loves digging and discovering. He is one of those individuals who always knew exactly what he wanted to do when he grew up and he has known this since he was three years old.

Joey discovers a dinosaur bone protruding thru the ground

Joey at age 4, digging for dinosaurs in his sandbox

Joey receives a triceratops T-shirt on his 6th birthday

at age 8 Joey wrote this paper in a class at school

Joey shows off part of a T-Rex he found, look at those teeth!

Joey at the Fernbank Museum in Atlanta

Joey and I took a ride out to Fort Peck Lake State Park one day. It is a popular fishing area. We passed by several other private dinosaur digs and research going on in the area.

Joey at Fort Peck Lake

Linda at Fort Peck Lake State Park

When it rains in the badlands the roads turn into “gumbo”. This is a local term used to identify the goop, which is a mixture of rain, dirt and small gravel. You cannot drive in gumbo. It is like trying to drive in wet cement and you WILL get stuck.

gumbo

rush hour on the ranch, cattle cross on a road of gumbo

Joey has a digging companion, his sweet dog, named Barnum. He is a Rhodesian Ridgeback named after paleontologist Barnum Brown who first discovered T-Rex right there in the Hell Creek Formation where Joey digs.

Barnum takes a break from dinosaur digging


Barnum tries to escape the heat by finding a spot in the shade

Joey is followed by his faithful companion, Barnum. Notice how much greener the badlands are in this photo taken by David on his visit as compared to the brown badlands in the earlier photos I have shown.



I will end my blogging on Montana by telling you about the Hell Creek Bar. One of 2 bars located in the little town of Jordan, the beautiful dark cherry wood bar inside is depicted in the movie Jurassic Park 3. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Jordan and my dinosaur digging experience. For anyone interested in making this trip go to the website for more info: http://www.paleoworld.org/

Paleo Joe

(again notice the greener background)