YAH Trip to Austin Texas July 2011

We are off on another great bus trip with our friends from Messiah Lutheran and other churches in area. We are going to Austin, Texas to view our Capitol and have lunch and view some films. We had great weather if you consider hot and hotter ok. We arrived a little after 10 and split up in our red and blue groups for tours. We had a very informative guide and it made the tour quite a pleasure. We had a little free time to browse in the gift shop and then have lunch in the Grill in the Capitol then a little more time to browse. We then went over to the visitors center to see 2 films. They were both very good and we learned a lot on Texas history. Some of us(who are native Texans) had forgotten and the others not being native Texans learned a lot. We had free time to view items in the visitors center or to walk outside. Before doing a lot of browsing or walking the grounds we had our group picture taken by our guide in the visitors center, and she did quite a good job. As you can see by the pics. George chose to walk the area and take a number of good shots of interesting things on the grounds. The bus ride home was not as nice as going up. The a/c was not working properly and we were very warm on the return trip. We stopped at Scoops for BlueBell in Brenham. Thanks to Louis Gaskamp for telling us about this hidden stop.
Our thanks to all the committee for their untiring hard work in organizing all our trips and keeping them going so smoothly.

Here is the sunrise and we are waiting for our County Bus to take us to Austin to visit the Capitol. We are to leave this morning at 7:00 A.M.
We are now on the road passing Prairie View Tx. Nice city Marker.

Well the first stop is in Hempstead for Coffee.

Next stop is the State Capitol.

We know what time we arrived.

This is the star at the top of the inside of the rotunda.

great tile work on the floor. All the seals of the State of Texas.

Our 2 statues are of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, which we learned were not native Texans.

The first Lady Govenor of Texas. Ma Ferguson

Picture from the second floor.

The Senate room.

Great light fixture in the House of representives.

The House of Representatives.

Nice hinges.

What a water fountain.

Then we had lunch at the Capitol Grill.

As we stood in line to be served.

Great view of the Capitol.

Notice how many stories up to the top ?

Then we walked over to the Visitors Center.

Neat staircase inside we did not have to climb these however.

Information on the following two flags.

Desk in the visitors center. Pretty cool.

More information about the Declaration of Independence for The State of Texas that was found.

Our own Cowboy, Wayne. Think he will be in the Houston Rodeo next year?

Yes we took the stairs to the second floor.

These stairs have been here a while.

WOW !!!!

The wall they uncovered.

Statue on top of the Capitol Building up close. Taken from the second story of the Visitors Center.

Our group today .

Our guide took the above picture for us.

This is one of many trees on the grounds.

Address of the Capitol.

Looking from the entrance on Congress Ave.

Nice Monument to our Firemen on the grounds.

One of two cannons near the entrance.

About the following fountain.

The Fountain.

A monument on the Capitol grounds.

The corner stone of the Capitol Building.

An old home on 8th Street in Austin Tx.

Modern Building in Austin Texas.

And another one. Taken from our bus on the way back to Cypress TX.

An old General Store in Ledbetter Texas on Hwy 290. They also serve Blue Bell here.

Nice Murals in Giddings Texas. Another one. I love these murals we find in some of the smaller towns in Texas.

Back to Washingon County on our way back home. These are so nice.

We had to stop at Scoops! in Brenham TX for some Blue Bell.

Most everyone had a scoop or two.

Wayne is enjoying his Blue Bell I think.

Wayne collecting our Name Tags before we head for home.

Let never forget to teach this to our children.