January 19, 2005 - Volksmarch in Austin, Texas

We continued chatting about all the members of our respective families over a nice breakfast that Priscilla had cooked, and Lois and I had a peek at a book discussing the 55 different ethnic minorities in China. Curiously enough, these minorities form only about 6 percent of China's population but occupy a much larger percentage of their territory since they are mostly located in the sparsely settled areas to the west. The costumes of the ones we had time to read about were very colorful and elegant, but I expect that those were the "Sunday go to meeting" costumes rather than their everyday working garb.

We reluctantly parted from Hank and Priscilla to continue southeast to Austin, Texas, which is the state capital. While we were in the area we intended, of course, to walk the Volksmarch there and pick up yet another state capital. Lois walked with us on the first stretch from the hotel where we registered for the walk down to the state capitol building. The first stretch crossed the famous (?) "bat bridge" across the Colorado River, so named because it is the home to thousands of bats that come out every night in the summer.

We continued through the impressive downtown business district that included many skyscrapers and some older buildings. Topping a small rise we came to the capitol grounds, a large square area with the capitol and auxiliary buildings as well as large expanses of lawn and some gardens. The capitol itself was perched at the top of a small knoll.

As we entered the capitol, one pleasant surprise was the lack of any security checks, scans, or searches. There were plenty of police there, of course, but I very much enjoyed being able to just walk in, look around, and take pictures without going through the tiresome and, in my view, unnecessary security routines. As we walked toward the rotunda we saw a sign for a short tour of the capitol and we decided to take that. The young man was agreeable enough and had a nice prepared spiel, but he didn't seem to have a deep knowledge of Texas history so I still didn't find out anything about the battle of the Sabine River. The Battle of the Alamo and San Jacinto were, however, depicted in huge paintings in the Senate chamber, and those he discussed those in some detail.

Our tour ended at the new underground wing of the capitol, which also housed a cafeteria and gift shop. Since it was well past our normal lunch time, we hastened to avail ourselves of the opportunity to chow down on some cheap grub and hobnob with the power elite for Texas politics at the same time, a definite two-fer. The cafeteria offered some really good entrees for around $5, so we each had a good meal while we discussed how to accomplish the rest of the walk. Monika and I decided to do the next 5 or 6 kilometers of the walk while Lois finished her lunch at leisure and sampled the wares in the gift shop next door.

Our route from the capitol wound north through the University of Texas campus and continued on to the Lyndon B Johnson library. There we had our start cards stamped before we circled back through the campus past the tower where a gunman had shot innocent bystanders back in the 1960s, one of the first of that type of mass murder that subsequently has become so depressingly common. Curiously, it didn't look anything at all like the drawings in the newspaper accounts at the time, and I was not sure if my memory was just playing some kind of distortion tricks on me again or if they had indeed changed the tower in the intervening 40 years.

We picked up Lois as our route returned back past the capitol. She walked with us over to the Governor's mansion a block away, which turned out to be a stately building surrounded with nice grounds rather like the capitol. From there we headed south and re-crossed the river to complete the Volksmarch.

All in all, we thought this was a very nice walk with the capitol, university, LBJ library, and governor's mansion as high points. The LBJ library, I should add, seemed to also act as a 1960s period museum, and if I had more energy I would have liked to tour the exhibits there. The walk was, of course, a city walk but Austin struck us as a clean, well-run city and the free "Dillo" busses ran on several downtown routes. That would allow you to break off the walk at almost any point if you became tired and take the bus back to at least the river.

After the walk we drove north out of town on Interstate 35, and followed it until we reached Dallas about 3 hours later. Lois was delivered safely back to Audie and Beth, and after a brief rest we continued on to the trailer where we just dropped into bed for the night.