We met at the Stevie Ray Vaughn statue along Lady Bird Lake to take a night hike around 8:30.
This was late enough for the heat to subside, but there was still sunlight. As we walked eastward along the trail, I heard the sound of a crowd of people, smelled a familiar stench then came upon the famous South Congress bridge where somewhere upwards of 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats were heading out for their nightly feeding.
Of course my camera phone wasn’t fast enough to capture the bats. We dwelled at this spot for about 15 minutes before continuing on.
Here was another beautiful sight: Austin at night behind Lady Bird Lake. A view so gorgeous even my camera phone captured a lot of it.
Once again, showing the limitations of aforementioned camera phone, I snapped a picture of a guy pointing his phone to the heavens to identify stars and planets, thanks to an app.
From this view, Joe’s Crab Shack actually looks inviting–not some place that’ll give you five different fried things on a plate with no vegetables!
We concluded our hike around 10:30. Three of us went to Whataburger, which turned out to be Whatabadidea! The service was exceptionally slow for a FAST food joint and the average customer at that time of night was 20-something and inebriated. I swore digesting that poor-quality food made me feverish around 3 AM. Some older yogi friends assured me it was a hot flash. (Yeah, a hot flash triggered by barely edible poison! But at my age, hot flashes are on the not-so-distant horizon.)
Nonetheless, that little excursion satisfied both my needs for a hike for a while and for fast food for the rest of my life!