Adventures in Caching: Austin

(and surrounding areas)

Just got back from five days on the road, first solo for a work venture, then with the kids and occasionally the husband for playtime in Austin proper. During this time, I traveled 623 miles and found a total of 45 geocaches. I was aiming for 50 so I guess that is close enough to count.
Here are the highlights of the trip:

Bastrop:
The work venture was successful in that I learned a lot of new information and was so well liked, or maybe my data was, that I was offered a job there. I thought the lady was joking at first but she was quite serious and also urged me to publish my paper on my work.I had downloaded about eight caches for this area that I wanted to get, but knowing my time would be short and mostly spent working, I wasn't overly optimistic. I got two in the direct vicinity of the small-town downtown area one evening and two quick ones along the side highway during a lunch break. I also spent about an hour and a half walking through Bastrop State Park after a couple of caches that I never got close enough to find. That just irked me. I was on the wrong trail or didn't drive far enough down to get close, but I did have a nice walk through a beautiful forest, and sometimes that is just the point, right?

The geocache highlight was Fireflies in the Garden, a nice park and grab in the garden of a quaint bed and breakfast in downtown Bastrop.

University of Texas campus:

After leaving Bastrop, I headed for the University of Texas in Austin because I wanted to view an exhibit there - "On the Road with the Beats" - at the Harry Ransom Center. I grabbed two quick caches along the way and got caught in some traffic and general road confusion, then had some trouble finding the best parking place on campus. When I finally parked, I was across campus and had thirty minutes until the exhibit closed. I hoofed it across the campus (and was really feeling those hills) and got to the exhibit in eleven minutes, but then the security guard closed it down with six minutes to spare, so I was only inside looking for about fifteen minutes. I wished I could have stayed longer, but I got to see what I came to see - the "Original Scroll" of On the Road by Jack Kerouac and "The Great Sex Letter" written to him by his friend Neal Cassady that inspired his particular style of writing.

After this, I took a more leisurely walk back to my car, grabbing two clever little caches along the way. Both were magnetic, and both you had to use your brain just a little to discover the location. They were right in sight of everyone yet well disguised. During this walk, I went to places on the campus I had never been to in all my years of various visits. I really enjoyed that, especially this cool water fountain and the Texas Exes Alumni Center.

Hutto:

After this, it was a drive north in sweaty scrubs to the little town of Hutto, new hometown of an old friend. G recently had a baby and moved up here to be with her husband, and I had yet to see her little daughter. She was just coming back from Houston as I was arriving, so I grabbed a couple quick caches while waiting for her, and then we pulled up to our meeting spot at the same time. I had been outside all day and man, the first thing I needed to do before even touching that little girl was shower. After that, it was late night talking and cuddling the baby.In the morning, I left about two hours before my scheduled renedevouz with my husband so I could grab some caches in downtown Hutto and Round Rock. There was a really cute virtual, a disgusting park and grab (LPC with a dead bird caught underneath it), a short hike in a park, another very quick virtual and a PNG.

Austin - Zilker Park and Downtown Area

Met my husband but the (freakin') hotel wouldn't let us check in yet. The children really needed to get out of the car and play, so I took them to Zilker Park. They played on the playground as I used the clues to solve the first part of a four part multi (that I actually had solved about two years ago, then lost the coords). Afterward, we headed over to the Austin Nature and Science Center. I had never noticed this place before, but there was a cache there that was right up my oldest son's alley. It was called Amatuer Paleontologist, and it is hidden in the Dino Pit, an area of hidden dinosaur "bones" underneath sand and silt that you have to shovel and brush off. He never wanted to leave this place. The center also has several animal exhibits, featuring birds of prey and a coyote.
We had spent an hour at the playground and an hour at the center, and I really wanted to get some caching in now. We hit three more (one in the parking lot of Freebirds World Burrito - of course I had to get me some) before checking into our hotel and taking a break. In the evening, we headed out to the HEB Central Market, the best grocery store ever. We had the whole Central Market dining experience, grabbing some food from the deli, eating it on the deck overlooking the playground, then taking a walk around the pond to grab a cache, and back to play on the playground. After this, we went to our very favorite book store, The Book People. I always spoil the children at the Book People, and tonight I had a gift check from a great-aunt of theirs to help. They have unique toys, books for everyone, and so many things to see and do in the children's section that the whole time we are there I hear "Look Mom! Look Mom!" Each child got a book and a toy, but then I couldn't resist a couple more toys and a puzzle to put away for the young one's upcoming birthday, and a Kerouac book for myself.

Austin Proper:

Travis Heights, Stacy Park, Spicewood Springs,Arboreteum

We had the whole day to cache on Saturday. We started the day with some caches along the west side of Mopac, and it was a mix of some park and grabs and some hiking into nature preserves and parks. The nature peserve one was a virtual, which was naturally a great choice to avoid messing up any habitats. Our favorite of the morning was It's Balcones Fault... Too ,a hike into Allen Park, a ten acre Travis County Park along the Balcones Fault Line.

We kept taking hotel room interludes and heading out again. In the early afternoon, we headed south to Stacy Park, a greenbelt area with a playground at one end in the Travis Heights area. There were four caches in a row along here, all a bit of a walk from each other. We spent a lot of time at the playground going back and forth. The last cache had me buggered. I was hot, tired, had just hiked up the hill with a toddler on my shoulders, and I just plain couldn't find it. My oldest took a peek and said it wasn't there, but just then something caught my eye and it had been right in front of me the whole time, but the camo was just that good. No wonder this cache was nominated for the 2003 Austin Cache Awards.

After this, we headed for Hillbert's Hamburgers for some overdue lunch and a cache. There is a cache at each of the two Hillbert's locations, and all weekend it seems I was driving past them. It was really making me hungry thinking about Hungry Hungry Hill-bert's. When we got there, AJ said he felt sick and was just acting very pathetic. It wasn't very hot that day, so I wasn't sure what it was, but as all of us in the house ending up with a nasty stomach virus over the next three days, I think now it the virus starting to infect him. Poor kid didn't even touch his lunch, and the little one didn't eat much, either. We ended up back at the hotel watching The Matrix and laying down on cool white sheets.

In the evening we went back out, heading for what is called The Arboreteum, which sounds like a plant zoo but is really a shopping area. I was happy because I managed to grab this cache that has been eluding me in my previous visits to Austin. If I had known it was a traditional "nano" container...anyway....yippee! We also grabbed three park and grabs and then headed towards the campus area. AJ felt better and was clamoring to do some "night caching", but I know how good I am at that, especially without a flashlight, so we did two virtuals (so we wouldn't be hunting something in the dark), one on the UT campus and one in the Auditorium Shores area. The last one was just awesome - we were walking in the dark in a field heading straight for the lake, which was sparkling in the moonlight. We came to a statue of Stevie Ray Vaughn that we had to answer a question off of, and walked along the trail next to the water and checked out the city lights. We were so relaxed and having so much fun exploring.

It was late, and we hadn't eaten dinner, and I was craving some mexican food. I totally surprised myself by remembering the way to my ALL TIME favorite mexican joint - El Arroyo, the place I wanted to take my friend Lara to in San Marcos, only this Austin location is actually still there. I had only been to this particular one one time in my life, about two years ago, with my friend Mari, but I remembered the way there. It was not as great as I remembered and the service was terrible, but I still really enjoyed myself there.

It struck me this time in Austin how many location memories I have there that are associated with my friend Mari. Usually I would be going to Austin to visit her, but she moved away last year after fourteen years of on and off Austin living. Has it really been that long Mrs Mari? She was my best friend in high school, and in '94 she moved to Austin and I to College Station, and there were visits during those four years, primarily to see her and occasionally to hang out with some other high school friends. We both moved away, but it was only a year or so she was gone, and then she was back, and I was in town for her wedding, and on visits home from Oregon, and wow, almost six years ago I moved back to my hometown, and there were five years of Austin visits to see Mari and her family. All those years of memories piled up on Austin hills, so that now when I drive by an intersection, I think "wow, that's where Mari and I..." or I would have a memory of driving that same way to get to her house, her old apartment, her old dorm room.
This really ties into another thread of thinking I have been having about how memory works, but another day, another entry.

Austin Memorial Park Cemetary, Shoal Creek Area

I really wanted to get some caches in Zilker Park, particularly an awesome earthcache where you have to take four pictures, two of which involve taking the temperature of Barton Springs. I wanted to take the kids in the water there. However, it was raining on and off, and this day that we had planned for the four of us to go attempt the earthcache, it was pouring. So we did mostly virtuals instead, one outside Zilker Park and two at the Austin Memorial Cemetary, which apparently has several famous residents, including one author I am a big fan of and had no idea he resided here. The things virtuals teach us....
We did some quick micros around the Shoal Creek area, including the other Hillbert's hamburgers cache, which I would NOT have found except that my husband and son decided to have some kind of a snail convention there. I had looked and looked (for about the third time that weekend) and decided to leave, but they found these snails and started rounding them up together and I decided heck, I'll just keep looking, and boom, there it was.

Then it was time to head home. Our journey was coming to an end. I was sad to leave Austin so soon, but after been gone so long, I was looking forward to getting home and resting.

The following night, I went to a caching event downtown after work and snagged a few more finds. I think my week total was around 48, which means I am now only 104 awat from my 1000th find, which I am hoping will be at GeoWoodstock this year.

104 caches, 52 days (wow, check out that math - hmm, two a day should do it).

P.S. Now 102 caches, 51 days.....