Austin City

Tonight, MK and I will lay our heads down in the Hotel Driskill in downtown Austin. If you've never been here, a very, very cool place. The first weird thing that Mary Kathryn noticed though was that there were cars driving around in TEXAS with pro-Obama stickers on them! I had to explain to her that Austin is like Chapel Hill, but I too was taken aback by the strong level of support for our president here in the middle of this bright-red state.

A good day of traveling, but the funniest thing said all day was Mary Kathryn's commentary on how she packed in case the plane was torn in half and we landed on a magical island. When I told her that the TSA might frown upon her taking peanut butter (for Claire), she was very upset. She is so easy to travel with, and we had a very uneventful trip from RDU to Austin.

Tonight we enjoyed a nice dinner at Moonshine, and then drove and walked all over South Congress looking at the interesting shops. MK got a t-shirt that said "Someone in Missouri Loves Me!" which she figures must be true, but she just doesn't know who it is yet... But her swimmer's ear (from the flight), and our exhaustion have brought us back to the hotel a little earlier than either of us originally planned.

I really liked some of my shots today, but this one, of a boot shop on South Congress was my favorite. BTW, the damn Capitol here is huge (and filled with nuts, but enough politics for now), and I went "WOW!" when I first saw it.

Off to Sacramento tomorrow (after speaking to the Austin AHU).

D300 18mm 1/1600 f/3.5 ISO 1600