My girlfriend wanted to get away from Austin for a weekend Texas coast trip. We rented an AirBnB in Aransas Pass, TX with no real set plans, other than just hanging out. So I looked for eco-destinations in the area to go visit. We considered going to the Texas State Aquarium, but two adult tickets were going to be $80! Meaning we looked elsewhere. That’s when I found the South Texas Botanical Gardens & Nature Center in Corpus Christi, TX. We headed over there with her dogs because unlike the aquarium, these gardens were pet-friendly.
The Rory Meyers Children’s Adventure Garden was one of my favorite destinations here in Dallas. I hadn’t been to the Dallas Arboretum since they had open this new section and I was really looking forward to seeing what all had been built in terms of the exhibits.
Austin Central Library – Library Design Talk and Full Tour
I returned to the Austin Central Library for another “Talk Green to Me” seminar about the sustainable design and features of the library, only this time I brought my grandma who wanted to see the new library and and city hall.
The seminar we attended was called, “A Deep Green Building Within a Green Neighborhood: presented by Lucia Athens, Chief Sustainability Officer for the City of Austin; Jonathan Smith, Associate Partner at Lake|Flato Architects; and Kathy Zarsky, the LEED Consultant for the new Austin Central Library.” — Austin Public Library Webpage
After my eco-inspired road trip, I had a hard time getting involved with sustainability initiatives in the Dallas Metroplex area compared to my time in Oregon. However, during Earth Day weekend, April 20-22 (with Earth Day on April 22), Dallas hosted its annual EarthX Expo, and I was excited to attend for my second year in a row!
“The festival, formerly called Earth Day Texas, is the world’s largest environmental festival, having drawn as many as 130,000 people. The main festival costs $5 and runs from Friday through Sunday at Fair Park.
But there are also two weeks’ worth of events, including a film festival and professional conferences that aren’t open to the public.
The three-day expo draws the general public with a tiny house village, a petting zoo, goat yoga, a scuba diving pool and about 1,000 exhibitors. At the same time, the festival is hosting conferences to discuss sustainability initiatives in the oil and gas industry and the E-Capital Summit to link investors with clean technology startups.” – Dallas Morning News Article
Last year in 2017, I went to EarthX for networking purposes and to drum up new business for the marketing agency I was working at. And the experience was more than inspiring getting to talk with hundreds of vendors/exhibitors, touring the tiny house community, watching some award-winning documentaries, and seeing cutting-edge sustainability initiatives and technologies!
