Weekend in Austin
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July 17, 2006:
This last weekend I went to Austin for my dad's birthday. It was quite a full weekend.
The drive there was uneventful; I drove non-stop. When I got there, I chatted with my parents for a couple hours, watched a little TV and then went to bed.
Saturday morning, the three of us went garage saling. It had been quite a while since I went out. I made sure to keep an eye out for birds I had never seen, but it was to no avail. I did notice that there were tons more Mockingbirds in Austin than in Houston. For the entire morning, I made one good garage sale find: 6 board games for 5 bucks, including one I had been wanting to get anyway: Quiddler. After garage saling, we went to Fry's Electronics. I got my Dad some street map software to go with his new GPS. I also got myself Pac n' Roll for the Nintendo DS (on sale for $9). In the evening, my brother and his girlfriend joined us for dinner at Bennigan's.
The next morning was the morning I had been waiting for: Birding and Geocaching! My dad had gotten a new GPS for his birthday, so he was anxious to go out and give geocaching a try. He didn't get a chance to load everything he needed, so we just used mine.
First we went to Meadow Lake up in Round Rock. There was one multi-cache there, which my dad was able to find both parts of it. The coordinates to the second part was written on the bottom of a rock. There were a couple of Mockingbirds that were not happy we were looking around their tree. I also saw some Mallards, which are very rare in the summer.
After Meadow Lake, we did a park and grab in the neighborhood across the way. Dad was the one to find it again. It was a hollowed out D battery! The log was too wet to sign.
After that we headed over to Chandler Park, which had 5 different caches. Of the ones we found, there was one in some thorns, one you had to climb up a tree, and one that was high up on another three. The other two we couldn't find. One of the ones we couldn't find hadn't been found for 3 months. The other one had been found just a few days ago, so that was disappointing that we couldn't see it.
After geocaching, we had lunch and went on my way home. I decided to stop at a few birding hotspots along the way. I first stopped at the Colorado River Preserve (maintained by the city of Austin). There were a lot of people there for recreation (fishing, dog-walking, etc.) even though there was a big sign saying that it was forbidden. But it wasn't a complete waste; I managed to see a White-eyed Vireo before a noisy group of kids walked by.
The second place I stopped, and undoubtedly the most populated by birds, was Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Facility. There were literally hundrdeds of Grackles and Cave Swallows and dozens of Starlings. I also saw a killdeer, a great egret, and a few cardinals. I would love to visit this place during migrations, it looks like a birder's paradise.
After that I went to Big Webberville Park, which was mostly a waste of time. It was a very very large recreational park, with lots of soccer and baseball fields, and a huge mowed picknic area. I managed to hear a chickadee (so I could at least mark something for being there), and went on my way.
Now I got to put my State Parks Pass to use, and I went to the Bastrop and Buescher State Parks. They were connected by a beautiful winding 6-mile long road. As far as birding goes, I didn't see all that much, but it was still nice to see what the park had to offer.
I tried to stop by the Monument Hill & Kreisch Brewery State Historic Site, but it had closed at 5pm. After that I just drove straight home.
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