Monday, 21 December 2020
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| today's route |
On the road
My route today would have been almost due east, except for my digressions in Austin.
It was barely light when I left Blanco State Park, and I knew that might make driving hazardous because of heading directly into the sunrise - and I was right. The road from Blanco into Austin - US 290 - is a decent road but it winds around and goes up and down a lot of hills. Quite a few people commute along that route daily, but for me it was a pretty unfamiliar drive. There were several points along the way when I was almost afraid to move forward at all, because the sun was so completely blocking my view that I literally couldn't see the road in front of me. It's a good thing the highway is 4 lanes most of the way so people could go around me; otherwise the frustration levels could have resulted in some deadly road rage at my slow speed.
Still, I made it into town in only about half again the time Google had said it would take.
And I should mention that when I went through Dripping Springs, pop. 1,788, I passed a business named "pieous" which I thought was clever (it serves pizzas).
Austin
My first stop was a branch of the Clinical Pathology Laboratory that I'd been to before. I went to give a blood sample my doctor wanted after I spent the last several days consuming no more than 1500 ccs of fluids. And I picked up the equipment for the 24-hour urine sample the doctor wanted, including a sealed container that looked about a gallon in size - only not a gallon like a gallon of milk, but a tall narrow container that only just barely fit into my little frig (the sample must be refrigerated at all times). Weird the things we'll do when the doctor says to do them.
From there I went as directly as I could, considering the difficulty of navigating Austin's narrow streets, to the state Capitol building. Today was the day for Tuba Christmas, that I wanted to enjoy in memory of my Momma.
I remembered how nearly impossible it had been in other years to find a parking space near the Capitol, and since this time I wasn't trying to park a Honda Civic, I wanted to get there early. And we got lucky - found a 3-hour parking meter just a block from the Capitol. Of course, I took up most of 2 spaces, which meant 2 parking meters, and it took almost all my laundromat quarters to feed them. I walked the dogs, and fed everybody lunch, and then walked over to the Capitol.
But sadly, no Tuba Christmas. You know, I'd wondered, when I saw the online announcement that they were planning to have it, how they expected to follow CDC guidelines. Yes, it's always held on the South Steps of the Capitol, which is in the open air. But tubas, sousaphones and euphoniums, which are the only instruments that play for this concert, both require blowing out air - the personal air that's in the lungs of the player. They have a limited area to perform in, and there are more than 100 of them, which has meant they stand fairly close together in the past. Yet, I figured this problem had occurred to somebody who'd come up with a solution.
I now know the solution was to cancel the performance. Of course, I was really quite disappointed, since I'd gone to quite a bit of trouble to plan my travel around this event and I really wanted to hear them. But when I went back online, I found it very hard to learn that it had actually been cancelled and not just moved to another location to accommodate the State Capitol Building being closed for the virus.
On the positive side, I found some pieces of history when the dogs and I walked around the area.
One is brand new history - a statue that was installed in 2017 but that I'd somehow missed seeing before I left town. I stumbled on it at a prominent corner near the Capitol.
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| "The Price of Liberty" |
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| closer view |
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| detail |
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| inscription at the base of the statue |
It's perfectly clear that this was intended to do exactly what the inscription says - honor the members of the military and their families in the wake of 9-11-2001. But something about this statue just appalled me, which is odd since a similar statue at the Veterans Memorial in Paris, TX, moved me a great deal. But definitely not this one. Differing aesthetic tastes, I guess.
It stands by the back of the Texas State Archives Building. At the front I found 2 interesting historical markers.
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| a reminder that partisan bickering isn't new in this country |
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| how an insurrection was born |
These face the east side of the Texas State Capitol.
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| Texas State Capitol |
Back on the road
From there, it took us about 2½ hours to get to Lake Somerville, a trip that Google said would take 1½ hours. About half the trip was on US 290, passing through Manor and Elgin ("Sausage Capital of Texas"), and the other half was on state and farm-to-market roads, passing through small towns like Manheim, Lincoln and Deanville.
In one field I saw 2 very young calves, one of them following Mama and the other getting head-butted by a full-grown cow. I swear by the end of this trip I'm going to be ready to take a course on cow behavior. And besides the cows, there were goats and a few horses. I've been seeing a lot more goats in Texas than I'd realized were here.
And on to Lake Somerville State Park, unsurprisingly located on the edge of Lake Somerville, a reservoir created by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1967.
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