Category Archives: Austin travel

Splashpads to the rescue

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A few years ago, the Austin City Council looked at removing the splash pad at the downtown Butler Park. I wrote an impassioned letter to each City Council member begging them not to do this because splash pads, unlike pools, provide my son some “cover” for his pacing and flapping and talking to himself. Thankfully, some improvements were made to the Liz Carpenter Fountain at Butler Park and it was reopened.

The reason I like splash pads is because all the kids are doing activities at a splash pad that look like pacing, and screaming and flapping, thus, my son’s autistic tics and irregular movements are not as noticeable, and we can enjoy some relaxing time without getting stares. At pools, we get some looks and the occasional comment. Plus, I have to keep a tighter rein on him in a pool, so he doesn’t get too close to someone and make them uncomfortable. So, I’m not in love with public pools (although the price is right.)

Thus, my love of splash pads. Austin has many more now than it did a few years ago, see them llisted here, and you can find them all over town. But in my opinion, there’s not a better view from a splash pad than the Liz Carpenter fountain at Butler Park downtown.

Austin’s Gluten-free, Dairy-free Dining Options

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Many kids on the autism spectrum are on special diets. I think one reason parents put up with the insanity of the gluten-free, dairy-free diet that autism doctors recommend is because there is so little else we can really do. Without biomarkers, we don’t even know what and where autism is in the body. So, diet is one thing we can control. I have seen some improvement for my son’s symptoms on the diet and each time I try to reintroduce dairy, my son’s agitation does seem to increase, so we leave it out.

But, when you’re traveling, having access to a kitchen and a specialty grocery store is rough. Luckily, Austin has plenty of options. Here are my son’s favorite places to eat:

1) Tarka–This Indian restaurant is a cheap, good place to get Indian food. Many dishes are made without cream or wheat. The staff is very helpful and understanding of differences.

2) Zen–When my son first started on the gluten-free, dairy-free (GF/CF) diet, I didn’t know where to go and we ate at this Japanese “food fast” restaurant almost daily. They know my son at the North Austin location we frequent and are willing to turn off their sound system when we’re there. I don’t know why restaurants even play music, it’s really nice when it’s quiet. I think my son improves the ambiance of most places by having them turn their music off.

3) Central Market salad bar–These grocery stores also have restaurants inside. We go to the salad bar for its selection and it amazes people at nearby tables to see a pre-teen boy eating seaweed and spinach salad. He really likes tofu and other foods that I don’t keep in the house, so it’s a win-win.

4) Chipotle–A chain of mostly organic meats and fresh ingredient Mexican food. My son and I were watching Oprah and came across a segment on how their food was locally sourced and the meats organic, and that was important to him. He’s funny. I never know what is going to impress him, but a restaurant with organic meat seemed to catch his attention.

5) Chuy’s–An Austin institution with locations across Texas now. This is harder for GF/CF options. Ask to talk to the manager to get a list of GF/CF items. There are few things on here that are purely gluten-free, dairy-free, but my son loves the carnival-like atmosphere and I love the margaritas. He says, “When you have a margarita, you will be in paradise.” He’s pretty dramatic, but he’s right.

If you have good restaurant options that are GF/CF in Austin, write a comment. We’d like to add to our list of options.

Five great places to go right now

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We are so blessed in Austin with abundant outdoor opportunities. I hate to generalize, but I will…I think most people with autism are calmed by nature. I have never seen my son throw a tantrum when we are hiking or walking or skiing or doing something active in a gorgeous natural surrounding. I’ve had lots of tantrums in my house related to media–can I watch more TV, can I watch that inappropriate YouTube video, can I keep playing angry birds and on and on. Therefore, when the weather is pleasant in Central Texas (this means not summer), there are lots of ways to enjoy what Austin has to offer. Here are five of my favorite outdoor picks:

1) Town Lake Hike and Bike–it can be a bit overwhelming with the crowds on a gorgeous day, but I find that looking at the lake and wandering around on the trail allows my son to get some much needed exercise along with allowing us a chance to look at downtown buildings and huge river cypress trees in the same view. The trails are free and accessible from the north and south sides of the lake.

From The Trail Foundation website, a view on the Hike and Bike.

2) McKinney Falls State Park–Located close to Austin’s airport in Southeast Austin, sits a little gem of a state park, McKinney Falls State Park. I try to head out there with my son before the summer drought because we enjoy wading and playing in the water at the “lower falls” portion of the park. The upper falls are really beautiful, but the lower falls offer visitors the chance to splash and swim in the portion of Onion Creek that flows through the park. It’s so close to Austin, yet feels so far away. There is no easy access to the lower falls for handicapped visitors. My son is able to walk without assistance and so can make the 1/2 mile hike over the rock formations to get to the water feature. Other areas of the park are ADA compliant. There are 7 miles of trails within the park and many of these are paved. There is a daily admissions fee of $6/per person, 13 and older.

3) Bull Creek District Park–There are lots of places to explore trails and falls within this Northwest Austin park. Here is a good map of the entire trail from austinexplorer.com’s website. We stick to the north part of the falls for it’s serenity. There are lots of neat things to see here, lots of frogs, fish and turtles in the water. Free.

4) City Park Beach–I’m not sure if that’s it’s official name, but that’s what I call it. Probably the only beach in the world with a sticker burr problem, Austin’s Emma Long Metropolitan Park boasts an actual beach on the frigid waters of Lake Austin. For a recent spring break, I took my son here every day and he swam up and down in the chilly water, while I waded with teeth chattering. This is actually a great place to go in summer when the outside temperature makes swimming more palatable. Sitting on the dock is peaceful and serene. There are loads of campers here during the major holidays, but during the week, you can be entirely alone with nature and of course the huge houses that sit right across the lake. I wish the city had bought that land as well so the view would be completely naturalistic, but oh well. There is a per car admissions fee of $8.

5) Art Park–This is what my son and I call the grounds of the Austin Museum of Art at Laguna Gloria. We will sprint over here on a school day before it closes at 5 p.m. just to take a 30-minute walk on the grounds. We hardly ever go in the actual museum, well, because my son wants to touch everything, and that is pretty much frowned upon. We enjoy strolling the grounds while admiring Lake Austin, the gorgeous Italianate-style villa originally owned by Clara Driscoll and the variety of sculptural works dotted throughout the property. My son and I love going here. It’s calm and cultured. The grounds are free to wander.

Traveling mercies

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Austin was lucky enough to have the touring Architects of the Air Luminaria interactive exhibit in our town and our son wanted to go. That’s the good news.

The bad news is the very very long line for this super cool experience. Friends, you know one of the biggest challenges of traveling with autism is difficulty with waiting. Oh, the waits and the fits and then the stares of other parents. It’s enough to make you want to stay home. But, this blog (and life) is about travel and adventure, so we prepared ourselves for a several hour wait. Bringing along an iphone loaded with games to pass the time, off our family went. We left an hour before the exhibit opened in hopes that we’d get a jump on the crowds. When we got there the wait was going to be around two, possibly three hours. So, wait and wait, we did.

Our son had even tried waiting the day before, standing in line with a therapist for an hour before giving up, unable to manage the crowds and the noise. He was determined to try again. I was proud of him for trying but not sure we could do much better. For more than an hour we walked and ran around and tried to entertain him. At one point, I headed off with my daughter and struck up a conversation with a lady out walking her dog around the park we were waiting in. I told her about our two-day attempt to walk inside the exhibit.

“Oh, there’s a line for special needs. I’m sure you can go up there and ask.” But seeing all of the people waiting in line, I didn’t want to “cut” even though our son was getting precariously close to giving up. While I was standing there debating with myself about asking for an accommodation, the dog owner (or was she our guardian angel?) strode up to the front of the line and got us a special needs pass. I let her. I never even got her name. When I went to retrieve my son and husband, our helper was already gone. I wanted to thank her and didn’t get the chance. I did get to thank the touring manager who O.K.’d our request but not the mystery dog walker.

I’ve had experiences like that before and it always make me certain that fate, or luck, or guardian angels is on the side of special needs families when they travel. Traveling mercies indeed.

My son, oblivious to the negotiations involved to get us near the front of the line said, “See I told you waiting isn’t so hard for me.”

So, what’s Architect of the Air exhibit anyway. According to their website:

“Each luminarium is a dazzling maze of winding paths and soaring domes where Islamic architecture, Archimedean solids and Gothic cathedrals meld into an inspiring monument to the beauty of light and colour.

The luminaria are designed by company founder, Alan Parkinson, who started experimenting with pneumatic sculptures in the I980s. They are made of a plastic produced uniquely for Architects of Air. Only four colours of plastic are used to generate a great diversity of subtle hues.”

When you step into the inflated “Luminaria” with its different “rooms” there is a wonderful glow from the colored plastic walls allowing light to filter in at interesting angles. One room has colored windows, like stained glass, and my son exclaimed in happiness, “Look at the stained glass. It’s a cathedral.”

My son was motivated to wait in line (not something he will normally manage) by his deep love and obsession with visual forms. The “Luminaria,” as the inflatable creation is known, looks like an inflated cathedral of colored plastic that you enter and walk around in (without shoes) or lay down in against the soft inflated walls. There is calm music playing in the background and the constant whoosh sound of the entire structure being inflated is quite relaxing. Listening to the music he said, “I hear beauty. I am in a lullaby land.” The whooshing and the near silence of the participants gives it a very spiritual feel. Or as my son said as we entered, “This is a new kind of synagogue,” and he got down and bowed in prayer. It was a beautiful mystical moment.

Thank you guardian angel of Austin for helping us have this wonderful experience.