We left the La Quinta (which is a lot nicer than the Rodeway Inn).  One note about La Quinta next to the capitol… you can’t really see it in the picture below, but there is a stop sign with a note that "All parking spots are Valet Parking"… When they say, "All", they don’t mean just this level, but every level in the parking… So that means adding $12/day to your stay.

First stop, Capitol building… (one note about grammar that my son has set me straight on..  Capitol with the "-ol" is the name of the building and capital with the -al is everything else, e.g. name of the city, big letters, etc.

saw the dome…

Senate chambers (picture below) and the representative chambers

Next stop was the "Story of Texas" Texas history museum..  Unfortunately they did not allow pictures in the exhibit hall.  So despite spending most of the day there, I really don’t have many good pictures… other than Yagi-san in front of the big star…

We caught the ‘Dillo.  It is a free bus service around the downtown Austin area.  We took it to the LBJ library.

This is the main room in the LBJ library.  All those red boxes contain all the documents of the LBJ presidency.

we were lucky today… There was an actor pretending to be Senator Johnson.  He answered any questions we had and gave a speech.  It was pretty cool.

Then we caught the ‘Dillo back to our hotel.  The wait was a little long.. so we rested while we waited…

Then we went to Bastrop to wait for my mom.  Our original plan was to spend the night at my Aunt’s ranch… however, she was not feeling well, so we went back to Houston.  While we waited for my mom, we ate at a mexican food place in Bastrop.  There were performers at Mexican food place.

My mom was a little delayed from her trip from Mexico.  So we needed to kill some time.  So I got a car washed.  This is the picture before the wash.  It is so dirty because on the way from Natural Bridge Caverns, it started raining MUD… Can you believe?  MUD?  Each drop of water had dirt in it. 

My mom and uncle showed up.  And then I got my mom and we headed back to Houston