Day 8-June 2, 2016-Austin and Round Rock, TX
Drove 160 miles in 3-3/4 hours.
Rain in AM, beautiful by 3PM. Sunny and 82.
Drove up Route 290, a nice four lane road through small, one stoplight towns that look like they’ve been abandoned. Passed a lot of iron sculptures for sale and antique stores. Some big ranches and pretty yellow wildflowers along the roadsides. The sky was filled with heavy black clouds with a bit of blue sky peeking out from behind. We stopped in Austin to go to our nieces childhood home and take some pictures for her.
Arrived at the campground early because it’s a first come, first served campground run by the Old Settlers Association. To belong to this association you have to have had a relative who lived in the county prior to 1871. In addition to the campground it has a lake, two churches, a meeting hall,playground, baseball diamonds and other sports facilities. I called yesterday and there were only 5 sites left so we wanted to make sure we got one, there’s no other campgrounds around here and it’s right across the street from Dell Diamond, home to minor league team Round Rock Express. After we set up and had lunch we went to the box office and got tickets for Sat. night, the first night they’re back in town. Good seats. Supposedly they are a good team and have had the highest attendance rates for the past 15 years so I’m glad we got seats early. From there we went to find the “round rock”, the town’s namesake, a rock in the middle of a creek on the Chisholm Trail which was a marker for settlers going west. The historical sign said it was a marker for a low water crossing and you can still see wagon wheel tracks in the rocky stream. But not with all the flooding they’ve had recently. The water was rushing all around and there were “road closed” signs in place ready to go up again. Back in the real world, we stopped at a grocery store for some things and got gas. After dinner stayed in and were lazy.