Heather Dalton Photography | Blog » lake

Bat boat!

Heather — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 16:43:12 +0000

One of the things I really wanted to show Sam when I took her to Austin for the 4th of July was the bats. Austin has the largest urban population of Mexican free-tailed bats in the world; the boat tour guide said there were 800,000 bats this year! They live under the Congress Avenue bridge over Ladybird Lake downtown. They fly out in swarms at sunset during the warmer months to eat, and you can take a boat out on the lake to watch. Sam and I went on Capital Cruise‘s bat boat tour and were treated to the best show they had had all summer. Below are pictures of the skyline at sunset, a yellow-crowned night heron (that feeds on baby bats and thus hangs out around the bridge), and the bats! The video shows several swarms of bats flying out from under the bridge, over the treeline, and down the lake. It’s amazing to see, so if you’re ever in Austin during the summer, you should definitely go check out the bats!

Yellow-crowned night heron

Bats!

The Oasis

Heather — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 01:49:01 +0000

A friend of mine, Sam, was in Houston from Canada for work right before the 4th of July. I took her with me when I headed to Austin for the holiday weekend. One of our stops was The Oasis, a restaurant built into the side of the limestone cliffs overlooking Lake Travis. Sam, Sara, and I had dinner and watched the sun set over the lake. It was beautiful but blazing hot!

Sara!

Sam and me!

You can see the dark side of the Moon in this one

Turtles!

Heather — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 03:12:13 +0000

When I went to Austin for the 4th of July, we stopped in at County Line BBQ on Lake Austin. It’s fantastic BBQ and has a deck out on the lake where you can feed the turtles! Below are a few that were especially friendly. They were adorable!

Nacogdoches and Blue Lagoon

Heather — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 03:07:09 +0000

Over Memorial Day, Em, Juliane, and I headed up to Nacogdoches to get Em and Juliane scuba certified. We had some free time in the evenings, so one night we went out to my old stomping grounds, the Stephen F. Austin State University Observatory. We got to use the 18-inch telescope (used by NASA to find landing spots on the moon during the Apollo program!) to look at Saturn and some deep sky objects. Very cool!

Saturn and the lights in the 18-inch telescope’s dome (I had it on a long exposure from the previous shot and didn’t realize it as I tried to take a picture of Saturn through the telescope eyepiece. Once I realized my mistake, I moved the camera away to change the exposure, making the curved lines and blurs in the picture. I think it makes a neat abstract image.)

Star trails and the 18-inch telescope dome. The bright one in the middle of the frame is Venus setting in the west. The top of the dome is lit from the full Moon rising behind us!

The limb of the Moon through an 8-inch telescope

Em and Juliane trained in the classroom and the pool at Diver’s Depot before heading down for some open water training at Blue Lagoon in Huntsville, Texas

We camped one night before diving more the next day. Thunderstorms down in northeast Houston lit up the sky

Two newly-certified divers and their divemaster (me!)

4th of July 2009

Heather — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:59:03 +0000

On the 4th of July, Sara, Emily, and I headed out to my family’s dock on Lake Austin in the afternoon. In the evening, Sara was playing with the Austin Symphony Band at a park in Round Rock so we went and listened to the band and watched fireworks.

It was a gorgeous day at the lake

skydiver #1 at the park

skydiver #2

skydiver #3

skydiver #4

Sara playing her flute in the Austin Symphony Band

fireworks!