Texas Trip, Austin/New Braunfels Leg

Though we don't have family in Austin, we love to make a trip over that way whenever we can, since it was our home for nearly 14 years. This trip, we adults got to have a "date day" to ourselves, while the kids stayed with G&G at the ranch.  It was awesome!  We couldn't have asked for better weather, and it was fun to explore unencumbered to juvenile whims. We stayed south of our old stomping grounds (for simplicity and traffic's sake) and our first stop was the "new to us" boardwalk along Town Lake/Lady Bird Lake/Colorado River. It was beautiful, and actually hot enough to warrant some shaved ice on the walk back.

Our next stop was going to be a coffee shop along the river where we used to study, but the next door Hula Hut's margaritas and chips and salsa on the deck were calling our name instead. I still count this among my favorite salsas ever! And yes, we split a stuffed avocado, too.  Heaven!

Next we cut back across town to check out a new brewery, Blue Owl, with our old buddy Juan. They specialize in sour-mash brews, which were not my favorite, but the guys enjoyed them. We also went by a couple of the hot, new east side eateries (i.e. long wait lists on a Wednesday evening) and ended up at Ophelia, a cajun restaurant that was still in its soft-opening phase (i.e. so secret we were the only table). Delicious!

Our last stop before the plane home was to surprise the kids with a stay at Schlitterbahn Resort in New Braunfels. Part of the resort was open for the Easter weekend, but most of the park was shut down until summer.  Too bad! This was taken right outside our room's door; in the summer, we could have hopped right in the float zone.

We had to ride a short shuttle to the open park. It was a beautiful day for lounging in the sun in PANTS, but swimming was another story! Even for these Idaho kids. The water was supposed to be heated, but it felt like the only warm water was in the kiddie area, which was totally fine with Hadley.

Owen enjoyed it too, but he also braved some of the coasters and bigger slides with Dad. Then he'd coming running back and hunker down in the warm kiddie water. I can only imagine their reactions to this place when it's hot outside and the park is fully operational! Maybe on another trip...

The funny part was that we were heading toward the exit at the end of the day, and suddenly Owen starts acting like a junior lifeguard getting tubes out of the torrent river. He did this for so long that the rest of us just sat down and watched. That's him stacking tubes with the lifeguards in grey and blue. Too funny!

After our busy day, we headed to downtown New Braunfels to eat some authentic German food. The kids, alas, were not a fan of any of it, except someone liked the purple cabbage of all things! Guess that's his heritage deep down, after all! There was a live accordionist and vocalist playing right next to our table, and Hadley did some polka dancing off-camera for them. We walked around the cute downtown a bit and found a yummy bakery to top off the day. 

The next morning, the kids opted to take it easy rather than try to squeeze in another chilly hour at the water park.  That was fine with us. We took a lovely stroll through the closed portion, which was calm and green and quiet. We saw lots of fish, turtles and ducks, and some probable 'snow birds' gave us the last of their bread to feed to the animals in the Comal river. I miss the green, leafy trees most of all, I think!

Then it was time to head to the airport and back to Jackson/Idaho Falls. We had a long layover in Dallas-Ft Worth. The kids always got to ride at the front of the tram, which they thought was awesome!

And there was a fun art installation at our gate, which helped to pass some time.

The trip back home was pretty uneventful, but was a late night on Easter eve. Nothing wakes you up like stepping off the plane in Jackson, WY at 9pm though.  Brr! Back home to a northern "spring". At least the Easter bunny still managed to find us on time!