a Texas wedding

Over the weekend we flew down to Austin to attend the wedding of my wonderful cousin Amanda to a great guy named Ryan.  We camped two nights with most of the wedding guests at a beautiful, out-of-the-way place near Dripping Springs, Texas. 
This was their first dance.

We got to feel warm again (hot actually, it was in the 80’s), swim in a great water hole, witness a touching ceremony, have a campfire and do some night swimming in a pool while enjoying a live band out in the woods.  We also ate tacos and played beanbag toss and hacky sack and caught up with my non-Pacific-Northwest family.

They also had fun decorations and perfect weather!

After the wedding, Jack and I spent another night in Austin with my parents.  We walked around and saw the state capitol, the damned up river/like that goes through town and went kayaking in the morning, before it got too hot.  
As far as wildlife goes, we saw one land snake, one water snake, some pretty water birds and about a hundred turtles sunning in the river. They might not qualify as wildlife, but the dogs at the leash-free zone on trail along the river were a delight to watch. I also enjoyed seeing the dapper beagle at the wedding.

Austin has had a lot of rain recently, so the wildflowers were beautiful and miraculously the bugs weren’t bad, even though the famous Austin bug-eating bats played an April fool’s trick on us and simply didn’t come out of their bridge roost.  We waited from 7:50 pm until 9:15 along with several hundred other would-be bat watchers, but no luck.

We ate our fair share of tex-mex fare at Chuy’s and Oasis, by lake Travis.  Here we are with our impressive “cathedral oak” trunk table.