Sizzle Sights: Aquarena Springs

If you grew up around Austin, you may remember Aquarena Springs, in nearby San Marcos, as a theme park whose array of visual delights included Ralph the swimming pig, a cable car ride, underwater clowns, and synchronized swimming shows performed by costumed mermaids. Visit the area today, however, and you’ll find an entirely different sort of place. Depending on whether your tastes run toward the more natural or the more visually entertaining, you’ll be either pleasantly surprised or faintly disappointed. For our family, the nature center offered a relaxing way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Walking about the grounds of Aquarena Springs, which now belongs to Texas State University and functions as a research facility, you sense a low-key tranquility that visitors of a previous generation would not recognize. Faded photographs and aging posters recall the “glory days” of the former theme park, but the real centerpiece – the San Marcos River – remains unchanged. Rather than serving as a backdrop to kitschy performances, the river is now a protected home to various plants and animals, including eight endangered species unique to this area of the Edwards Aquifer.

Visitors can view these particular species inside the small aquarium building, which offers a few visual and interactive exhibits My kids were particularly amused by the giant catfish incongruously named “Mittens.” Other highlights included the Texas Blind Salamander and a tank containing tree frogs in various stages of development.

On the other side of the gift shop – well-stocked with “green” educational items – we discovered the Wetlands Boardwalk, where my youngest learned quickly that in its purest definition, a boardwalk is … well, a walkway made out of boards. Its setting invites leisurely strolling with plenty of pauses to ogle the cormorants and herons diving for food, the Texas-sized tilapia trying to avoid becoming that food, the turtles trudging through algae and lily pads, and the lush water plants – or, more scientifically, “hydrophytes.”

What really thrilled my young naturalists to the gills, though, was the thirty-minute glass-bottomed boat ride on the San Marcos River ($8/adults; $6/children ages 4 and older). Like an anchor in time, the famous glass-bottomed boats are the only manmade attraction that has run at Aquarena Springs since 1946. These days, they offer proof that what goes on underwater can be just as entertaining as any human embellishments. Our poor driver, attempting to educate us in the history and ecology of the river, was peppered with questions about everything we saw and heard.

Some of those sounds and sights included underwater forests, fish, turtles, “burping” sand, and SCUBA divers performing research duties along the riverbed floor. We learned that the river and its eponymous town derive their name from St. Mark, the patron saint of youth, on whose honorary day some Franciscan monks stumbled upon these springs of still-drinkable water.

The glitz may have passed on from this place to behemoths such as Schlitterbahn and Sea World, but as a quiet place to absorb nature’s wonders, Aquarena Springs still retains its charm.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

http://www.aquarena.txstate.edu/