This past week I went with Tiffany to what I billed as "The Alternative Trail of Lights... which is BETTER than the original Trail of Lights". Not only had I never gone before, but I had never even heard of it in my 20-something years of living in Austin. Yes, I can't believe I never knew about it either. But to be fair, Tiffany had never heard of it either. In fact, she thought I was making stuff up.

A little background for you non-Austinites. Every year, the city of Austin puts on the Trail of Lights here at Zilker park. You can either walk or drive this trail, and along it are light displays that are sponsored by many local area companies such as Dell, HP, Samsung... etc. As you can imagine, the displays are pretty extravagant and bright. I've been to this a couple of times, in fact I also participated in their annual 5k run a few years ago.

The alternative Trail of Lights is actually called "The Lights on 37th Street". Apparently it was started back in 1980 when a few neighbors along a short span of 37th street decided to hang some christmas lights up. Each year, the displays became more and more extravagant as neighbors attempted to out-do one another. In fact in years past, reviews have labeled this rag-tag collection of house lights even better than this corporate, commercialized light display that is found at Zilker park each year.

Except this year...

While it was still impressive, the Lights on 37th street weren't quite up to snuff as a whole. Some houses were very impressive (one had a giant 5 foot sphere of lights hanging about 8 feet in the air). Others were kinda freaky (skulls and cobwebs don't really go with the Christmas theme). And some houses were just pitch black due to zero participation. I read that the original founders of the Lights on 37th street recently moved away and so there wasn't anyone around to motivate everyone on the block. Furthermore, college students have moved in to some of the houses and since they are gone during the Christmas break, less neighbors are around to participate.

But it was still fun, and the weather was just cold enough to encourage that Christmas spirit. You know, because it needs to be cold to have Christmas spirit:)