Saturday in the Park, think it was September the 5th

Yesterday was the grand opening for a neighborhood park in Leander. Because of COVID, they were taking reservations for two-hour spots, and since they had a splash pad, I hopped on that puppy.

An aside -- Having to preplan to use the greenbelt or water features has been a major pain in the rear for a lot of people, but for myself, who rarely just thinks, "Let's get in the car and go hike!" out of the blue, this has been absolutely one of the best things about enforcing physical distance between people. I loved it at Jellystone when the pool was at 1/4 capacity, and it turned out GREAT for us yesterday at Lakewood Park.

So much room, so few people.

It's a neat park, too. Will likely be packed with folks when we return to "normal," so I appreciate our getting to explore it with a dozen or so families instead of the whole town. They had vendors, too, and we made sure to buy a drink from one because I'm sure they would have had a better time with it packed out.

The limiting admittance thing has been my absolute biggest plus of the past few months. I do not say this to be callous; I realize people are struggling and that there is illness and loss. It's seriously the luck of privilege (our circumstances, location, etc.) that has minimized the true suffering in this pandemic. I do not take that for granted.

But a lot of people have been quite vocal in advocating that we return to full open to all green common spaces (and when I say "we," I really mean Austin) since tax dollars pay for it (and the same could be said about our local park, which is closed on holiday weekends to minimize excessive wear-and-tear as well as outsized burdens on our small local EMS and police force). However, we're seeing that just hordes of people "enjoying" nature also harms it. There is garbage, foliage trampled, and dog feces in and around the trails and in the water. Noise pollution doesn't irreparably damage those spaces, but for the people who are there when a couple of other folks have music playing on their phone speakers, it definitely blunts the quiet communion with nature.

So if, going forward, they decided to open half of the spots up for reservations and the other half walk-up, but then close entry until other people had left, I would not complain. 

One more kind of cool thing from the weekend:

Friday, the live-action film of Mulan was released on Disney+. We certainly would have gone to the theater if that had been an option, so we went ahead and paid for premier access. It was great (except that the trope of scarring the bad guy is lazy and needs to go away; there were plenty of warriors in the film, and somehow only the villain has facial scars? Do better.). Really a beautiful film that I look forward to watching again soon.

After that, we went to Moonie's to get burgers, and then took them to Veteran's Memorial Park for a picnic. The sun was going down, it was a relatively cool day, and because we've just been home for so long, it felt like a really big deal. 

Lake Season!

Today, Mal and I walked down to the lake for the first non-post-storytime visit in a while.

Lesson 1: If the sun's out, wear a tank top, no matter what the temp feels like at the house.

We didn't stay long, but were there for enough time for me to notice a few things.

Mal played with a little girl who had probably just recently turned 2. When we first got there, the dad was with her. A few minutes later, the mom came (back?) with a drink for both of them. The mom had backed their SUV into the parking space nearest the playground, which is a space reserved for the handicapped. It's entirely possible that they had a tag; I have no idea. But when they left, the dad is the one who drove. He cut to the right too quickly and rubbed an orange wood pylon all down the passenger side back door. Oh, I hated that sound for them. I've done the same with a borrowed truck in a parking garage! And their SUV looked flawless otherwise. Hope they do what I'd do and just ignore it. Poor kids.

When Mal and I were getting ready to leave, there was a couple getting ready for the boat launch. The guy was climbing into the boat and the lady was getting into the truck to back down the ramp. The guy asked her if she had her fishing license. She responded irritably, "I don't know. I'll check when I get into the boat, and if I don't get to fish, it won't be the worst thing that's ever happened."

Once she started easing backward, he was hollering directions to her: "Straight. A little left." She had both windows up and I wouldn't be surprised if she was blasting the radio and the air. I don't know why she was so miffed, but she was. Then he yelled really loudly because they hadn't unhooked the boat from the trailer and he wanted to do that before they got into the water. She did stop for the yelling. I hope they had a great time once they got out on the water.

Finally, we left via the exercise stations they have near the walking trail. Unlike some trails that have the exercises spaced out, these are all just scattered in the same area. Mal calls it the "grown-up playground" and he loves to see what he can do. While he was doing them, I noticed, again, a truck idling in the boat parking. I'd been aware of it, on and off, since we'd gotten to the park.

I mentally put the pieces together: When we'd arrived at the park, there was a guy sitting in a docked boat. A few moments later, a woman wearing (carrying) a baby and walking a preschooler went down and put the older child into the boat. The guy and older kid took off, down the arm of the lake, and the mom and baby disappeared. They had apparently been sitting in the truck the whole almost hour we'd been there and I presume were just waiting for the others to come back.

I HATE noise pollution in places like this. I get that it was borderline hot today (low 80s), but in the shade, it wasn't bad. I can't imagine sitting in an idling diesel for more than an hour. It wastes gas, plus it means everyone else around has to listen to your truck running the whole time they're trying to enjoy nature! It might not be as bad as when people rent pavilions and they think it means they get to blast the whole park with their music and/or public addresses, but it still detracts from the whole "we're outside getting closer to our host planet" vibe.

Anyway, we also saw these. which was nice. And Mal got to taste his first drop of honeysuckle nectar, which he liked.

I neglected to mention in the last post that we'd acquired an inflatable kayak. Now that it's heating up, I'm super excited to get down to the lake to try it out! Hopefully soon!

Park Focus: Palma Plaza

Today, I thought we'd do something a little bit different. There is a park in our general area, and every time we drive past, I itch to explore it.

This afternoon, I rode my bike over, and first of all, I don't recommend doing that if you live east of the park. We've walked once before and it's not much better. Accessing it on foot from the south, we had to walk up Castle Hill. I didn't want to do that, so I accessed it from the north, which meant riding my bike on 15th, which was only marginally better and nearly killed me.

But it didn't! And so, without further ado, my maybe second video and very first single-focus video I've done on this site. Hope you like it and that it inspires you, too, to explore our magnificent city park system!