How nice has the weather in NYC been the past few days?! I’m completely exhausted from walking around all day on Friday, Saturday, and today. In two days I enjoyed some time in 7 different parks!! Hopefully everyone else found excuses to be outside this weekend!
So continuing from my last post, after we visited the Cathedral of Junk, we made the 30-40 minute drive outside of Austin to visit Hamilton Pool, part of a collapsed grotto with a still-standing pool of water and a trickling waterfall. After paying admission into the camping ground, you could hike a little ways to get to the pool area, or you could hike in another direction to make your way over to Hamilton Creek. We only had time to visit the pool and took our time hiking through. On the way, I took a picture with the cacti because, along with palm trees, I’ll always enjoy “foreign” flora.
We finally got down to the pool and it was kind of odd to see a mini little beach area with beautiful green water underneath a cavernous overhang. After taking some pictures, I noticed that a turtle had come up to the beach. I went over slowly and he shrunk halfway back into his shell, but stayed out enough that I don’t think he minded me picking him up, and Mai and I took a couple pictures petting and holding the turtle. Though he must have had enough of us, because when I put him back in the water he promptly swam away! (I think only a film photo was taken of this since my digital camera was dying.)
I had been picturing more waterfall action to be going on, but I guess because it was still early in the season there were just a few areas of steady water flow. You can also swim in the water if you want to, and the woman who we spoke to on our way in informed us that it was “a chilly 64 degrees.” I tried not to scoff, that’s nothing when you’re used to swimming in the cold Atlantic ocean! However there was one problem, I didn’t have my bathing suit! There was only one other guy there and he had brought his trunks to go swimming, and I was jealous. Finally Mai convinced me that I’d regret not going in, so I took off my pants, knotted up my shirt and jumped in! It wasn’t too cold to start, but it always ends up hitting you a little once your torso is immersed.
Even though I had to walk back up the trail and sit in the car for about 40 minutes with a wet butt, it was definitely worth it! What a great place to go on a really warm day to sit and relax for a while though! Check out this video to see how peaceful it was:
Once we made our way back to Austin, we had sushi for dinner which was delish, then to Annie’s for ice cream and photobooth photos, and then to meet up with some other friends at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema for Music Mondays. I was pretty excited to go to this theater because you can order food during the movie and they bring it to you in your seat! So I passed on ice cream at Annie’s and ordered a milkshake at the movie theater that they brought to me during the movie. And this time I didn’t have to feel bad about sneaking it in (I’ve sneaked many foods into the movies, including Taco Bell, haha).
All in all, a great way to end my Austin vacation! I am anxiously awaiting to get back all the film I shot while in Austin (getting the rolls back on Wednesday!) so I will definitely post a link to those photos if they turn out to be any good!
– Alix!
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i think my commentary is the best part of that video. haha
I wish more people would write blogs like this that are really fun to read. With all the fluff floating around on the internet, it is rare to read a blog like this instead.