This is the eerily quiet 10pm view from the splash pad in Butler Park across Lake Austin to downtown.
The fountains are going strong here in the dark like they expect children to be running through them. But it's empty, and the water just collects in inky black puddles tailor-made for reflecting city lights.
The only bother is the distinct odor of chlorinated water.
Butler Park Pond
There's the UT Clock Tower and the State Capital Building, of course. But otherwise, the 360 Bridge (aka the Percy V. Pennybacker Bridge, aka the Pennybacker Bridge) is as distinct a structure as we have.
By national standards, it's not that remarkable. But I love it. Depending on when you make the hike, you can be alone while taking in the view from the bluffs overlooking the bridge and the river.
On a warm November afternoon like this one with that dramatic Texas sky, the clouds and afternoon sun, the bluffs, the Hill Country view, and the Colorado River, it's about as "Austin" as a view gets. And it's pretty good looking.
Both work hard a little too hard at being "weird." So it's a high holy day for the city.
The Hyde Park neighborhood really leans into the celebration. It's a bit like Christmas crossed with Halloween.
A great "Stranger Things" themed house.
Word has gotten out about the Halloween party on F and G streets, and it's pretty much mobbed the entire night. One house had a live DJ on the lawn. Another had a giant maze.
The residents of Hyde Park must either love it or hate it. Too crazy a scene for indifference.
This striking sunset on Boca Ciega Bay, in St. Petersburg / Tampa, Florida, is why I will someday live near the ocean.
Hurricane Matthew was harassing the sea late last week, and I wanted to watch the ocean get angry. Others did, too.
I didn't speak to this pink-shirted woman. Just sneaked the pic. Anyone sitting by herself on the end of a jetty in tropical-storm winds, dodging flying sea foam and stinging sand, wants to be left alone. Or so I thought.
The poignant moment broke up when I realized she was just on her cell phone.
These two gentlemen weren't going to miss the chance to wind surf.
This pic was taken the night before the storm arrived in St. Petersburg (to the degree it arrived at all). The ocean is moody enough when the weather is calm. But add outflow from a hurricane and the sunset lights up.
I'm in St. Petersburg, on Florida's west coast, as the Cat 4 Hurricane Matthew is raking Florida's east coast. On the far western edge of the storm, it's warm, incredibly humid, and the mild bluster is pushing these clouds quickly across the sky.
At the moment, its biggest effect here is a very welcome one for me: the dramatic skies.
Sunset on Cow Creek. West of Austin, TX.
Every stream on Austin's west side holds one or two falls framed by swirled, smoothed bubbles of limestone that look like bleached vertebra of some gigantic creature.
This bent limestone forms the Balcones Escarpment, a fault line on Austin's west side, which I've learned marks the boundary of the "American West." To the east, farmers work the Blackland Prairie. To the west, it's iconic "cowboy country," the Edwards Plateau and the high plains.
One of many streams traveling that fault line is the humble Cow Creek, pictured here. It passes through the Balcones Canyonlands Wildlife Refuge, polishing its limestone bed and serving up a lovely sunset reflection.
It gets really pretty. And beautifully rural.
But it gets noticeably less rural every year. Maybe a little less pretty, too.
The city keeps pushing cars and houses father out into the hills like a slow-motion urban avalanche. Exurbs spring up in the juniper and live-oak thickets on the far edge of the suburbs, with new luxury homes offering "Hill Country views" (of other similar houses as it turns out).
To distract buyers from their 50-minute commutes, some developers offer dramatic 50-foot accents, like this watchtower, at the entrance of their fresh cul-de-sacs.
But just because it's developer-built and made-to-look-old doesn't mean the structure can't be dramatic as it pretends to peer out into the endless Hill Country twilight.
New structures designed to look storied. Freshly minted chairs masquerading as 19th century Americana. "Distressed" jeans. "Faux" finishes.
Charming places and things gain genuine appeal when they serve real lives over time, like these lonely posts.
There is nothing "faux" about this distressed remnant of a fence along a trail I enjoy out in the Hill Country northwest of Austin.
It does nothing now, except the critical work of evoking another time.
Soaptree yuccas stand sentinel as the sun sets on the endless white sand dunes.
It's so rare when things live up to the hype.
But I was blown away on an evening visit to White Sands National Monument, New Mexico in July. There was some good fortune with the weather and sunset drama, but it would be gorgeous any day. The otherworldly beauty and desolation of the place has stayed with me ever since.
For best viewing, go during the golden hours, before or after the glare and sometimes dangerous heat set in. Marvel at the white-sugar sand that takes on colors of the sky. Take your shoes off and sink your feet into something ancient and ever changing. Be ready to go home with sand in your socks, pockets, and bags.
The few cars left in the park exit along the sand road in the twilight just before closing time.
The view from The Oasis through one of the innumerable smartphones feebly attempting to capture the grand landscape.
The largest daily gathering of cameras in Austin takes place in a restaurant.
They converge in the evening at the "Sunset Capital of Texas," aka the fantastically over-the-top Oasis on Lake Travis. Founded in 1982, The Oasis has grown into a Texas-sized conglomeration of specialty shops, kitschy sculptures and endless plates of quesadillas.
Serving some 2000 people each evening, it's easily one of Austin's largest restaurants, and each patron has a camera close at hand. They lounge on four cantilevered floors perched on the limestone cliff offering an unrivaled west-facing view of Lake Travis and the Hill Country.
I took this pic at the moment the sun set, when the restaurant staff rings a bell and hundreds of diners raise their cameras and click away, feasting on a scene that rarely disappoints.
While many Austinites talk about The Oasis as a bit of a cliche, it's really a beloved landmark. We've all been there, I'd wager. And we'll go again. I'm an unapologetic fan of that "cliche" and take every out-of-town visitor there at least once. And you can bet I'll have my camera, too.
As a natural-born introvert, I'm thrilled central Texas is loaded with people-free places for when you've got to get away.
One well-kept secret is the Balcones Canyonlands Wildlife Refuge, about 30 miles northwest of Austin, along the scenic Hill Country byway Ranch Road 1431. I go there often to hike its miles of mostly empty trails and enjoy the rural Hill Country views.
It's lovely any time of year. I took this pic in December when the dormant winter prairie grasses glowed in the evening light.
This naked tree by the Rimrock Trail caught my eye as it jutted up out of the meadow like black lightning against another glorious Texas sunset.
Thought it would be just me and the 360 Bridge on the overlook this time.
It was a rainy (and beautiful) early morning. Really moody atmosphere.
But Ed, founder of a new local band Our Liberation, was already up there with his cameraman getting ready to shoot a music video.
When will it be live? "I have no idea. I'll let you know."
He moved here from Houston this spring, looking for a few more bandmates.
Ed's not afraid of heights. "I'm a bit of a monkey." Played his guitar right on the cliff edge the whole time.
So...tell me about you in this chair on this corner.
"My name's Johnnie. I work here for Esther's Follies. [A locally famous Austin improv comedy troupe.] I move people along when they've worn out their welcome."
Worn out their welcome? So, you're a bouncer?
"Maybe. People like to hang out too long in front of our (observation) window, kinda trying to be part of the show, and I send them on their merry way."
He has to be the most distinguished tourist bouncer in Austin.
The beauty of youth is given. An aging face's beauty is earned.
This flower vendor I photographed on Sixth Street is especially gifted with character lines that ripple away from the splash of her smile.
She's sitting in the heart of Austin's entertainment district, but I'm not convinced that's a happy smile.
She's one of Austin's many marginal residents. Panhandlers. Drifters. The out-of-options. Austin is prosperous, vigorous, young. But the city is also full of economically precarious families. And a booming homeless population. Often old. Or old before their time.
I'm sorry I didn't buy a rose.
Locals wonder constantly whether Austin is still "weird" - a true refuge from modern American life.
Austin came of age as a quirky capital city with a strong permissive bent: Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Naked, if you wish. Preferably while floating in Barton Springs or some other shockingly cold, clear burst from the Edwards Aquifer. In a word: hippy.
Those aging hippies despise young hipsters, new money, and development.
Their tree-hugging legacy is in the city's numerous parks, leafy urban canopy, and woefully inefficient highways designed around our urban wildernesses.
Turns out those greenbelt wildernesses are treasures providing endless enjoyment for Austinites, and softening abrasive days of commutes and deadlines.
None more than Barton Creek Greenbelt, a densely forested canyon one mile from downtown. It's still a little "Austin weird" down there. People do still smoke 'em (partially) naked. Mustache-twirling hipsters cliff jump. Hippies waft patchouli.
There are miles of trails, and if it's rained enough, picturesque places to soak, like the dad and daughter I nabbed above.
Austin is totally and completely landlocked. And yet our lives here are shaped by water.
It's semi-arid here at the edge of the Hill Country, and so we're always just coming off the last drought or heading into the next. That's why they dammed the Colorado River (No. Not that Colorado River) to form the massive drinking fountain that is Lake Travis up in the western hills.
The Colorado River drops away from Lake Travis as it snakes along the west side of town before turning east toward the Gulf of Mexico. Splits the city right in half.
That east-turning section of the river was dammed again to form Lake Austin and to hold the water levels stable downtown. Several of my favorite spots are along the shore.
One evening this week I was working from Mozart's Coffee patio, right on the water, as the city was overtopped by a huge thunderhead just as the sun set, providing that impossibly golden light you see in the photo.