Austin Half Marathon & Fredericksburg

We travelled to Austin via San Antonio and Fredericksburg staying a night in each place on the way. We have been to San Antonio on numerous occasions and it is one of our favourite destinations however we had never been to Fredericksburg and just fell in love with this little German town - definitely on our 'places to go back to' list. While there we visited Enchanted Rock and walked around the base - a very special place. We also stumbled across a most magnificent elk - what a speciman!

We arrived in Austin late Saturday afternoon on the Feb 16th and met up with Pat & Sam and their friends Kirsten & Allan, who were kind enough to open their house and provide us with a place to stay. Thanks so much Kirsten & Allan for your amazing hospitality - we hope we can reciprocate one day. Saturday we went out to dinner at a wonderful Persian restaurant that had a very exotic belly dancer as entertainment and met some more of Pat & Sam's friends. Heather (from Houston), who was also walking in the 1/2 marathon, and Jan & Charles, Austin locals, who shared their holiday 'down under' adventures with us all - they had even visited Adelaide so we had lots to talk about. It was a wonderful evening. The next morning Kirsten was up exceptionally early, fed, watered and then drove the walkers into downtown for the start of the marathon. She arrived back home to organise a magnificent breakfast for Allan and myself - what an amazing lady! We then headed to the finish to cheer everyone over the line. Kirsten & Allan wore red hats so the walkers could easily find us in the crowd and that worked a treat - I think it is the start of a new club - the red hat brigade (I'm on the look out now for our red hats!) John came through first and was ecstatic with his sub 3 hr time followed by Heather, Sam and then Pat. Congratulations everyone - you were awesome!