Austin Bat Bridge Festival

Austin has this great tradition of celebrating the bats that live there every year.  Millions of bats live under the Congress St. bridge and fly out everyday at dusk.  One day a year the whole bridge is shut down and fills up with people going bat watching.  They also have tents of vendors, food trucks and bat costume contests.

 We paint our faces at home before leaving for festivals.  Avinash choose purple, blue and green for his bat mask.  Nandini picked purple and pink.

 We had to get water ices after I saw the Rita's truck. So many memories of high school and hanging out with friends there.

We got to stand right at the edge of the bridge and wait for the bats to appear.  We didn't want to miss them so we got there around 7 but the bats didn't show until closer to 8.

So protective.  (And, yes, we were doing the same thing to them the entire time.) The wind really picked up at one point and it seemed like a huge storm was coming.  It was so refreshing in all that heat.

Bats! Yes! They are awake and starting to fly.

Pretty soon they formed a dense line.  You can see the black cloud that suddenly appeared in the second picture.  You almost wouldn't know they were bats just from looking.  

Such a fun experience, but you can do go almost any time around dusk and watch the bats with less crowds.  I'm pretty sure you can dress up too and no one would look at you funny here.