South Austin

Every year, I think of all of the fun things we can do around town in the summer when I'm off and every year the summer gets here and it's so darn hot that we wind up going to these places and abandoning them less than an hour later in favor of air conditioning.

This year, I got smarter, and planned an all-outside Spring Break instead.  Today we went to the Botanical Gardens and Hartman Prehistorical Gardens which we had never visited before.

It is, as one might expect, just a really big garden.  In which you may not pick any flowers.  Or walk on the grass.

No worries.  They have all of these walkways and there's enough to look at to occupy even preschoolers' attentions for a while.  Mostly, though, they had lots and lots of doodlebugs.

 

 

The thing about the entire place that I found fascinating was the proximity to Mopac, one of our major highways.  I mean, here you are in this serene garden setting...

 

 

And there's Mopac... no really... right there.

And when you get to the Hartman Prehistoric Gardens, you really understand how close you are to the freeway.

So very bizarre.  In fact, that overpass is the part of Mopac that we park under to go to the Nature Center.  I really didn't understand that we could exit the back of the Botanical Gardens until we got there and found the gate open.  So we finished our garden tour...

... said good-bye to the Prehistoric Garden...

... walked a block down that road whose name eludes me...

... and said hello to the Nature Center.

 

It was a beautiful spring day... lovely weather, a cool breeze and overcast skies.  I am so glad we spent it outside and got to see one more aspect of the South Austin parks system.  We are so lucky to have this natural oasis so readily accessible.