Days Off in December

The holidays are always a time when things slow down at work, since most everyone takes time off. I didn't take too many days myself, but we did get a couple of long weekends. The weather was beautiful most of the time, so we tried to get out and about. On Christmas Eve we went down to the bay front and walked along the seawall, plus we finally checked out the Bird scooters that have multiplied and taken over downtown. The kids enjoyed it, almost as much as I did I think.

It's a beautiful time of year in South Texas... can't beat it!

Mammoths and Caves

On our trip to Austin and San Antonio, we also went a little out of the way to check out a couple of parks. We saw a mammoth and a cavern, but not Mammoth Cavern (I don't think Austin is that close to Kentucky). We took the road north to Waco so I could put another pin on my map and visit Waco Mammoth National Monument. Sometime back in the 70's (I think), a couple guys found a strange looking bone sticking out of the ground in their cow pasture and realized it was a little bigger than a normal cow. After they took it to the university, they discovered there was a large patch of ground with more than 20 mammoth fossilized remains. Apparently back in the day North America was loaded with these large elephants, camels, and giant sloths. Somehow this group got caught in a flash flood or some other kind of quick-death event, and all ended up in a pile. So the park was formed around it in just the last few years and they built a pretty nice building over the site to preserve the fossils in the ground the way they were found. It was a small park, but pretty cool to check out.

Nolan's best mammoth impression.

Not amused about something. 

We also stopped at Longhorn Caverns State Park, though we didn't take the time to do the tour of the cavern itself. It was a beautiful day to just walk around. We climbed this observation tower and took a look at Falkenstein Castle. Apparently, a husband and wife visited Germany back in the day and were inspired by a castle there, so they came home to Texas and built their own. You can't tour it, but I think you can rent it out for weddings or events. You can see it as the tiny dot off in the distance behind Adam in the picture above.

We checked out the entrance to the cavern, but the price was a little steep and we didn't have all the time anyway.

The Hill Country is surprisingly beautiful, especially this time of year when you're not sweating to death. We'll be back, I'm sure.