Texas Hill Country

This area of Texas is full of small agricultural and ranching communities, as well as some very quaint towns.  Many of these have very distinct characters as they were founded by different immigrant groups.  There are also quite a few lakes that have been formed by damming the Colorado river as it flows through Texas.

    Lake Buchanan.  One of the reservoirs created by damming the Colorado river.  It is the oldest dam of it's kind in Texas.

    No fishing signs at Lake Buchanan.  They want to be certain to get their point across!

    A lot of the country was covered by drifts of wild flowers of all different kinds and colours.  Unfortunately the photo doesn't really do it justice.

    Detail of the wildflowers.

    Beautiful Yucca flower spire.  These were also growing wild everywhere!

    Cactus like these were interspersed with the flowers.  This kind of vegetation was more what we expected!

    Wind pump in Texas.

Inner Space Caverns near Austin

These are limestone caverns near Georgetown, about 30 miles away from Austin.  They were discovered while building the interstate.  The cave complex is very large with only a small part open to the public, but with a cool cable car to reach the caverns!

Austin and West Texas

Only a couple of photos here.  West Texas was extremely barren and flat with little to relieve the eyes.

    Austin State Capitol building.

    Oil pump in West Texas.  There were loads of these all over the landscape as we were driving from Austin to Carlsbad in New Mexico.  Some seemed to be no longer working.  Apparently after oil prices dropped in the 70s, it has become increasingly uneconomic to sink more wells in Texas.  However, we did see what looked like a few new wells being drilled, or at least some exploration bores.