We didn't take photos here, alas. But Llano is very cool. We stopped the car in front of a store selling spurs, bits, and antique wagons, and walked out onto a big lit bridge over the river. It was a beautiful, warm night. We were looking at the river when we realized (arachnaphobes stop reading HERE) that all the struts had been colonized by zillions of stripy garden spiders. We like spiders and had a good time peering at them. They navigate by vibrations, so they would react and jiggle like mad whenever a car drove over the bridge. If you are coming into Austin from the north, at night, you should learn from our mistake and stop for the night in Llano, which seemed pretty arty and had amazing cowboy-movie buildings everywhere, and was just really neat. (Unless you are afraid of spiders.) Because we didn't stop, but drove the extra hour into Austin, got lost, and ended up exhaustedly crashing in a dingy Motel 6 right by the interstate. (The desk clerk was really nice, though, and recommended a good, cheap, open Mexican restaurant.) Today we are hoping to explore the non-Motel-6 parts of Austin.
These are from 6th Street in Austin, which is in fact a pretty cool city, just like everybody says. Unfortunately, we missed Austin's famous bats. We didn't know this before we came, but evidently Austin has a several-million-strong bat colony that roosts under one of the main city bridges all summer. (In September, the bats head to Mexico. They come back to Austin in the spring.) Everyone we talked to, even really conservative-looking people, was very proud of the bats. So if you come to Austin, come in the summer and see them for us.
