Just another April Austin day

A beautiful Saturday, perfect weather. Started out at a great garage sale in Tarrytown, a few houses down from this creative piece of carport art, and the old "Keep Austin Weird" house that was once featured on the show HGTV's "What's With That House?" (they call it "the pig house")

but has since been tamed down and is now for sale. {sigh} Click photos to enlarge.

From there we went to the Earth Day festivities down at Republic Square Park. Austin is really a very green city, but I've always been pretty unimpressed by the Earth Day efforts. This was combined with an art event that was mostly about letting kids make stuff, and making the adults wish they were kids. Here are some pics:

One of the entrances

Bugcycle

Live music, of course

Wonderful live oak tree at the other entrance...

...big enough for climbing

Someone's pet giant turtle

Even though this event is about being "green," a lot of the participants are selling products and some of them are linked to large corporations that might not be so green... and that's hard to avoid. I was disappointed to see that The Domain was one of the big sponsors. It's a huuuuge shopping complex of very high end stores (mostly chains) such as Tiffany and Neiman Marcus, one of those sprawling artificial paradises that will eventually include condos. It's also infamous for bleeding the Austin taxpayer for something that will drive out local businesses. I see no reason to go there.

We left the Park in search of light exercise and tasty beverages. Here is a mural that I didn't remember seeing before. There used to be a microbrewery on the adjoining lot, which the mural was part of, and that was taken over by the Fox & Hound (another chain!!), now that's been torn down to make room for more condos. This mural will not be there long.

The Austin Duck Adventures is an amphibious open-air tourist vehicle that takes people on Lady Bird Lake as well as through some popular places in town. They give everyone on board a "quacker", a duck call, so they can quack at everything. I busted out laughing when the tour guide spotted a woman carrying a guitar down the street and yelled through his bullhorn, "THERE'S A MUSICIAN!!" and they all went "QUAAAAAACK QUAAAAAACK!!!!!" I guess strolling musicians are on the tour checklist.

We walked quite a bit. Saw this beautiful flower on prickly pears at Mother Egan's,

but waited until Woodrow's to have a beer. How can you resist this sign?