Late Spring Visit to Lake Travis
A late spring visit to Texas, and the afternoon went to Lake Travis, out northwest of Austin. It's a reservoir, not a natural lake — Mansfield Dam backed up the Colorado River and made it official in 1942 — but from the bluff at the Oasis it reads like open water in both directions, which makes sense once you learn it runs some sixty-plus miles with about 270 miles of shoreline. Around 210 feet deep at the deepest point. Boats left long white wakes way down below and the far shore was just a low green line with a water tower on it.
We stayed on the decks through sunset. The color never really committed — a strip of orange under the cloud bank and then it was done, the lake going flat gray-blue.
After dark the whole complex above turned on: strings of colored bulbs crisscrossing the courtyard, a clock tower for the brewing company, and a crowd packed in around a man in a cowboy hat in front of a Texas flag. Hard to hear anything over the talking.
