We got up this morning and hung around trying to get a plan together – did a little GMC-work too, see below – lots of photos there too. At about 10am we made our way outside – it was only about 81 degrees – and walked over to the hike and bike trail around Lady Bird Johnson Lake. Austin is a very progressive city, second only to Silicon Valley in high tech activities and they like their outdoor life and the environment so lots of people walk and bike around the lake. Although it was very hot and relatively humid – a lot like Arizona’s summer heat in monsoon season – the trail was very shady and we didn’t have to walk in the hot sun until we got to the bridge over the lake.

About the lake, it is actually a dammed up river. They call it the Colorado River and don’t distinguish it from the other Colorado River that carved the Grand Canyon in Arizona. This Texas-Colorado River is dammed up to create a series of lakes, Lady Bird Johnson Lake (formerly Town Lake) is the last one in the series. The lake is long and narrow and great for human-powered watercraft. We didn’t see anyone swimming but I am sure some were. On both sides of the lake is the hike and bike trail and, even on a hot Saturday morning, it was very busy.

After we crossed the very nice and dedicated  hike and bike bridge over the river it was a short walk to the largest Whole Foods grocery store anywhere. The bottom 2 floors of the Whole Foods chain’s headquarters office building have the grocery store attached to one side of them and, if you have ever been in a large Whole Foods, Wegman’s, or AJ’s you know there are good things to eat there. We had a small breakfast so we could have something there. We had a coffee and a pastry and then headed for the bus stop.

Our plan was now to take the bus – a 24-hour pass costs $2 and it is much easier and cheaper than parking a car – to the Texas Capitol Building and do the free tour. The Capitol is very beautiful and well worth visiting. We did not take the free tour, we took the self-guided tour using material they provide. We saw both congressional chambers and the supreme court chambers – very impressive.

Once we were through we took more buses to a museum sculpture garden that was just down the street from the camp ground. The sculptor was a world renowned artist named Charles Umlauf who spent many years teaching at the University of Texas at Austin. He lived and worked at his house which is now part of the museum – not yet open to the public but his gardens are.

GMC content: well, it was cool this morning and I decided to try to find the vacuum leak on the engine. I got my flashlight and my can of WD40 – I think the idea is that if you find a suspected leak point you spray some WD40 on it and, if it is leaking the engine will ingest the WD40 and you’ll hear it – and opened the engine hatch. Other than removing the air cleaner so I could see the vacuum connections I really didn’t touch very much except I noticed a small puddle of engine oil on top of the intake manifold right next to a spot that could be called suspicious. I mopped that oil up, could not find a source but it looks like it might be coming from the seam with the head. Other than that there we no suspicious connections so I started the engine and took a look at the vacuum gauge – now semi-permanently attached to the manifold – and it was now nice and steady and reading almost 20 inches of vacuum. Looks like it has to be hot to fail – more evidence that it might be the intake gasket.

I could not run the engine long enough to warm it up because we are all too close together here and we also make a fair amount of noise with those flow-through mufflers. I will wait and observe – when it fails I will look again. Stay tuned.

Here are the photos. I would suggest that you do not use the slideshow – it makes it hard to see the captions I wrote and you’ll want to see those I am sure ;-). Instead of the slideshow just click on the first image and use the arrows on your keyboard or click on the arrows at the bottom of each photo next to the captions.