Solar Eclipse 2024 - Austin & San Antonio

Back in 2017 we went to Idaho to see the total solar eclipse and it was an amazingly cool experience. Our strategy in 2017 was to look for the statistically sunniest part of the eclipse path, and it worked out great. We used the same strategy for the 2024 eclipse, and made plans to visit Texas, which was the part of the country least likely to have clouds. Granted, the odds were not as good as Idaho in 2017...we'll get to that soon enough. We booked well in advance, and flew to Austin the Friday night before the eclipse (which was happening on a Monday this time around). We arrived in the evening, and stopped by HEB (our favorite Texan grocery store; try the guacamole!) before heading to our AirBnB.

We found a really cool AirBnB to stay in. Known as "the silo," it was a small round building in South Austin. The owners have a few other AirBnBs next to it, a couple of converted airstream trailers around a field. We really enjoyed staying in this unique place, and it was walking distance from a few outdoor music venues and food trucks. Plus with eclipse-mania sweeping the nation, it was about the only affordable option!

What a unique place to stay!

The inside had a cool vibe.

The next morning, Saturday, we walked over to get some coffee and breakfast from the food trucks. We went to Praxis coffee and David's Doughies, which were both great. We sat on a picnic table under the big oak trees to eat. We then drove to downtown Austin, and met up with David's cousin Will. He works at the Austin library, and gave us a tour of the impressive central library building, including the "technology petting zoo" which was in a book of 100 things to see in Austin. We then drove to lunch at Loro, a popular fusion Asian / Texas BBQ restaurant that David visited previously with a coworker on a work trip to Austin in 2023 and really enjoyed.

Breakfast time from David Doughie's Bagels NY Bagels (from a dude from DC #imposter)

The Praxis coffee truck. Paul came here every day!

Austin has a lot of new residential skyscrapers.

The huge atrium in the library.

Very cool views from the library roof.

The roof was impressive, with trees and solar panels.

Frozen drink sampler at lunch.

Eating outside is apparently the official pastime of Austinites. We were happy to oblige. 

Yum!

We next drove to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center. This is a big outdoor botanical garden, and it was absolutely packed with eclipse crowds. The parking lots were overflowing and people were parked along the street all the way back to near the interstate. Luckily, we found a spot. It was a pleasant place, and was full of the namesake wildflowers since it was spring. We enjoyed the massive oak trees as well as the stone tower near the center of the gardens.

Our next stop was the LBJ library and museum. It was larger than we expected, and we arrived about an hour before closing time, so we had to move pretty swiftly through the exhibits. It also was very crowded - probably one of the busiest days they've ever had.

Entering the wildflower center.

So many bluebonnets.

Cousins!

View from the top of the stone tower.

A little snake friend saying hi.

Walking by the oaks.

It's an impressive brutalist building.

Ladybird Johnson's key to Atlanta next to some other random lame keys. Atlanta clearly does everything bigger...

I'm not sure if he's an expert, but after visiting the museum he knows something!

Unfortunately creepy animatronic of LBJ.

After the museum, we went to the nearby Scholz Beer Garden. The actual garden is a little underwhelming and we had to wait for a while to get a table outside. The beers and a giant pretzel were all good though! After a while, we decided to meet up with a few of Will's friends closer to the center of Austin. We weren't really hungry, because of the snacking, but had some drinks at Ellis.

If you didn't know, Austin is home to one of the world's largest urban bat populations. Approximately 1.5 million bats live under the Congress Avenue bridge from Spring - Fall. Female bats roost here and give birth to pups before wintering further south in Mexico. By now it was close to dusk so we walked over to the Congress Ave bridge (just a couple blocks away) to see if the bats would take off to feed for the evening. Unfortunately, some nights the bats just aren't that into it...and it was one of those nights. Maybe the thousands of tourists on the bridge (like us) had something to do with that. 😭

After the disappointing bat performance, we wandered around a bit with Will and his friends trying to get into a cocktail bar. Unfortunately, since it was so crowded we couldn't get into anywhere trendy and ended up a Iron Bear - which was a local gay bar - for a drink before splitting off from the group and heading back to the AirBnB for the night. Overall a fun day and evening and a great catch-up visit with Will!

Scholz beer garden.

The crowd gathered to see the bats.

Downtown Austin is pretty cool looking.

Nighttime views in Austin.

The next morning, Sunday, we started the day again with some Praxis Coffee, and then hit the road for San Antonio. This was our theme park day, and we began with Sea World San Antonio. Unfortunately,  several of their coasters were closed, but Paul still got two new credits. We were there for a couple hours, and then drove to the near by Six Flags Fiesta Texas. Again, many of the new coasters were closed - there were four new credits here for Paul, and only one was open. It was still a good time, but disappointing to miss a total of five potential new coasters between the two parks. 

While Paul was wandering around Six Flags, David drove to the nearby Torchy's Tacos (our favorite taco chain in Texas - with a location coming soon 2 miles from our house in Atlanta!). Unfortunately, David didn't even finish his chips and queso before Paul called saying everything was closed, please pick him up. 😂 So David yoyoed from Torchy's back to Six Flags and then back to Torchy's because Paul obviously wanted some too!

After lunch we made the best of the situation on the ride back to Austin by stopping by Camp Fimfo to ride Cliff Carver, an alpine coaster. Bonus credit! We also stopped in downtown San Marcos and walked around for a bit and Paul had ice cream at Rhea's.

Unfortunately, there would be a number of signs like this today.

If you click the image, find Paul, and text David about it. He'll Venmo you a dollar. 😉

Where's Paul, though? Get it? Where's Waldo...where's "Paul though." Ugh... sigh.

A sleepy sea lion.

Fiesta Texas has a fun atmosphere.

Le sigh.

David's pre-Paul Torchy's.

Paul's Torchy experience!

One of Cliff Carver's three lift hills at Camp Fimfo.

You don't get a dollar for finding Paul in this one... so don't ask.

Downtown San Marcus.

Rhea's Ice Cream in San Marcus.

Back in South Austin we decided to pop into Reset Video Game Bar, which was pretty close to our AirBnB in one of the random entertainment districts of buildings and food trucks that are all over the city. Unfortunately, the drinks weren't great and the games were pretty expensive and some of them didn't work...so kind of a bust.

From there we decided to drop the car off at the AirBnB and walk to a couple of the other nearby entertainment/food districts. There's an unofficial path through some empty dirt and grass parking lots that connects our AirBnB complex to 3 locations on the main road. We decided to walk over to the nearest (the Moontower Saloon) since they had a couple food trucks and it looked like a neat place to hang out. Unfortunately, only one food truck was open, it had one guy working in it and he shooed us away because he was overloaded with orders...so back to the area near Reset Video Game Bar we went, walking along the huge Texas road with no sidewalk. Here we got some tacos and drinks at Lulu's, which was pretty nice. There was a line dancing class going on in the main room of the bar, which was fun to see.

Reset Game Bar...meh.

Paul's channeling his inner cowboy here.

Moontower Saloon had a really cool space...just no food for us.

Yay Texas! Way to not build any sidewalks where clearly a lot of people are walking.

David looking like Morticia Adams with the lighting at Lulu's. The food was still from a food truck but was pretty ok.

Good drinks though!

There were goats on the walk back to our AirBnB!

Hanging out at the AirBnB at sunset.

Finally the eclipse day arrived! Unfortunately, since we live in the 21st century and have access to good weather data days in advance, we didn't have high hopes for viewing the eclipse due to forecasted cloudy weather. Our experience in Idaho in 2017 lead us to worry about crowds, where to park the car, access to necessities (like a toilet and water) and traffic in general. So we booked a "VIP experience" to view the eclipse at a winery (The Edge) near Fredericksburg, Texas, which was closer to the center line of totality. This was the backup plan after Paul spent literal hours trying to book a spot at a State Park with no luck. We headed out early with hope that the clouds would part enough to get a view.

Unfortunately, when we got to the winery, it was clear they had not planned well for this event, overall. Maybe they lost a lot of reservations when the weather soured, or maybe they just never really had their shit together, but they slapped a bracelet on us, told us we were "VIP" and to have fun. After wandering around a bit, we had to go back and ask where the VIP section was, how to get some wine, where to get food, etc. We were shuffled back to a special area, where we were alone, with nowhere to sit, no snacks and no one to take orders. After a while, David accidentally ran into the owner, fussed and eventually we got some chairs and a waiter. Unfortunately, an overall negative experience that we paid a lot of money for due to a concern of overcrowding that didn't happen because of the bad weather.

Since we were pretty financially invested, we opted to not chase better weather, so in the end we got a few glimpses of the partially eclipsed sun and one very miraculous 5 second window just as totality occurred where we could see the sun...but then the clouds obscured the rest of the experience and we spent our time in totality with very awesome mid-day darkness, but no view of the eclipsed sun.

In hindsight, which is maybe not helpful considering the next total eclipse in the US isn't for like 20 years, not planning as much and instead being able to chase better weather in a car might have been the way to go. 😁 Fortunately, we did see the 2017 solar eclipse, so this was not a once in a lifetime experience missed.

On the way back to Austin, we only ran into one spot with bad traffic, which delayed us maybe 15 minutes. Overall, our fears about crowds and traffic didn't manifest...again, likely due to people changing their plans due to poor viewing conditions expected in central Texas a week before the eclipse.

In a twist of fate, the climatologically sunniest place (Texas) and least sunny place (Maine) decided to pull a fast one on America...

The grounds at The Edge were really cool, overall.

Except for a few minutes here and there, this is mostly what the sky looked like in Central Texas.

We got a few view of the sun as it was sliding towards totality. Just a sliver of sun left here!

Everyone looking real hard for a sun that they can't see.

No, it's not night...it's just the eclipse's totality! 4 minutes of darkness in the middle of the day.

After getting back to the AirBnB we were pretty beat from a long day of driving and being anxious about the eclipse, so we wandered around the grounds for a bit, and checked out the music entertainment venues within walking distance of our AirBnB again. We strolled over to a place called the Armadillo Den, which was actually the coolest of the nearby venues and had some live music. There were also team volleyball games happening at the Moontower Saloon which were fun to watch. Austin is a pretty lively and interesting place for people to hang out. For dinner, we got some food from a truck nearby called "Lebanese Hummus Cuisine"...it was actually pretty decent despite the stupid name.

David hanging out in the hammock. He definitely didn't fall getting out.

Paul hanging out at the Moontower Saloon.

The Armadillo Den is the coolest spot around. Too bad we found it on the last night!

Who doesn't love a good mascot?

Tuesday morning, our last half-day in Texas, we started with breakfast at Toasty Badger, which is a 1970s themed breakfast joint. From there we went to the Bullock Texas State History Museum, which had a few nice exhibits but also some over-the-top Texas propaganda and a ridiculous oil exhibit with no mention of climate change or the environmental and health impacts of the oil industry. I think we'd still recommend visiting, but make sure you have your critical thinking cap on because Texas will presume to tell you they invented the moon if you let them. We've never seen a State so full of itself... sometimes rightfully so, it's huge, diverse and interesting... but also it's kinda racist, doesn't plan its cities well and is so engrossed in culture wars it makes you feel a little icky to be here... and that's coming from people from Georgia!

Transported to 1970 for breakfast at the Toasty Badger. Would recommend!

Omelet time.

The Bullock Texas State History Museum.

After the museum, we headed back to the airport. Unfortunately, our flight home was delayed, but we eventually made it back to Atlanta. We had an ok time in Texas, despite the cloudy eclipse, no bats, very few roller coasters, the museum whitewashing history and unplanned suburbia in general. We really do love seeing solar eclipses though! We might just have to visit Spain for their eclipse in 2026 or Egypt in 2027 to get our fill!

PS - If you were counting the word "unfortunately" shows up 12 times in this blog. Can't win them all! 😭

12 "unfortunately"s ha ha ha!