Lake Travis

Austin’s lake — sixty-five miles of it, wrapped in limestone cliffs, twenty minutes from downtown and a different world.

Travis is a flood-control reservoir on the Colorado and it behaves like one. Levels swing more than any other Highland Lake, dropping tens of feet in a drought and coming back in a season. When it is full it is the best boating water in central Texas; when it is low the ramps close and the marinas move.

The towns around it are newer than anywhere else in the Hill Country. Lakeway and Bee Cave grew out of Austin rather than out of the nineteenth century, and this region is suburbs and marinas rather than main streets. That is what it is, and it is honest about it.