L & D to Austin

As mentioned in a previous posting , our friends L & D came for a 4 day visit to our fair city. We had a lot of fun showing them around, playing games, and generally making merriment. Lets get to the pictures, shall we? We went on a campus tour which was fun. Here are the precocious pair by the statue of George Washington. UT has a lot of statues of random public figures with little or no association to the university, which I find odd, but whatever.


while on campus Lou took time to reflect on life... and turtles in our campus turtle pond. He was very interested in these creatures as you can see by his erect ears... we had to hold him back from leaping on them.


This pic comes from a walk around the lake we took on Saturday.. This part of town has great views... everyone comes out to recreate around ladyBird Lake when the weather is nice and we were no exception.
Souvenir T shirts are fun! D got this one at a shop on 6th street. This is the same shop where our friend Russel purchased his infamous "F#%$ y'all I'm from Texas" shirt. D chose something a little more subdued.


Here we are at Pedernales Falls. We found out how to access the western part of the falls via a small cliff. Good times were had, although the weather was not cooperating... this was a theme throughout the weekend. The weather here has been great all winter compared to Madison and unfortunately for L and D is was abnormally cool for their visit. I am told that the end of March and early April is prime camping weather.

On Friday we slipped on down to San Antonio. The famous Alamo is seen here. we actually went inside this time, it was pretty neat. Afterwards a park ranger gave a stirring oral rendition of the siege of the Alamo. Our patriotism was stirred deeply.

This is us on the riverwalk hanging out. We love the riverwalk, it is super fun. This is the spot where Demian saw his "favorite duck ever." She was diving and snacking on bread on the bottom of the river, Demian was fascinated by this and took several videos and pictures of her. He also poured some shinerbock into the river for his homies who couldnt be here. In doing so he actually improved the water quality of the san antonio river.

Here we are in the Buckhorn Saloon and museum in downtown San Antonio!!

We found this place on the roadside america website. It was worth every penny. Here we are with our Shiner Bocks in front of a big ole longhorn.
Below are some of the many exhibits and stuffed animals.

Mongoose vs. Cobra is an epic struggle (kind of like GI joe vs. Cobra). In this case I am going to say the Cobra has the upper hand. First off, the albino cobra is 8 times bigger than Ricky Tikki Tavi, and it has him in a strangle hold. Also the cobra is hypnotizing the mongoose with its beady red eyes. It doesnt look good for the mongoose at this point.

This is some sort of saw fish... awesome... D almost fell in the aquarium.

Excuse me, may I cut in? you too are dancing awful close there... oh I'm sorry, my bad, I didnt know you were Siamese calf twins.. How Awesome!!!

The most fascinating exhibit was of course the world famous "Manboon" (top left). We had heard good things about the manboon, but seeing it in person in all its glory, took our breath away. Is it a missing link? A taxidermy mishap? Who knows, perhaps we'll never know, but one thing is for certain, our lives were changed forever. Lesser oddities and freaks were also displayed including a particularly evil merman (front center) and some sort of man-squirrel-velocaraptor (back center), but none struck us like the manboon.

We may link up all the awesome pics (all 146 of them) soon... keep on the lookout for that.