Austin Trip Day 3

The third day we were in Texas we took it easy during the morning, just hanging out and resting. You see we had a plan to go into Austin and watch the Congress Bridge Bats, the largest urban bat colony in North America.

Before we headed to the Congress Street Bridge, we spent the afternoon at another swimming place, Deep Eddy. I didn't take a single picture while we were there. After swimming, we found a Cuban Restaurant to eat at. The food was good, and the kids seemed to enjoy it (well, at least the water and air conditioning.)

We headed to our final destination for the day after that, Congress Bridge. We arrived and tried to figure out where to park, and sit. There were crowds gathered above, all along the bridge, and below along the river. We chose down, because with the kids we wanted to be able to sit and it was shady there.


As soon as we sat down we could hear the bats talking to one another. The chirps and whistle sounds growing louder as we waited.

The bats live in the crevices that were created when the bridge was built. They come here to have their babies, its a giant maternity ward. Every evening as the sun goes down, the slowly emerge to eat insects. The bats come out, first a few at a time, then more and more. Finally its like the bridge spews them forth, in great ribbons of black dots of bat. The ribbons go with the flow of the wind, sometimes going one way and sometimes another. It really was a beautiful sight. (If you watch just the beginning of this video you can see the ribbons of bats I was talking about.)

When it was dark, and we could no longer see, we went back to the car, and drove home. It was late and thus ended day 3.