The Great Southern Adventure: Texas!
644/2,773 miles traveled so far
Days 3-5 on our road trip across America’s deep south, featuring San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth.
If there ever were a good cure for ignorance, I believe traveling would be just the ticket.
I always pictured Texas as brown, dry, and flat. This is true of much of the state, especially in the summer surely, but what I have seen of Texas has been different.
April 24, Day 3: Evening
Our first official stop in Texas was San Antonio. We stopped for dinner at El Bucanero - Blanco, where we shared a heaping half-pineapple of ceviche. We sat on the back porch of the Mexican seafood restaurant overlooking a speckled meadow with leafy trees and children playing tag and follow the leader.
The succulent bits of seafood, mango, avocado, pineapple, and coconut meat were married together with what seemed to be a gallon of fresh, sweet, citrus juice. It hit the spot after a few days of road trip food. We left the restaurant with happy, tingling tastebuds.
Next came the infamous San Antonio riverwalk and the Alamo. Alex got to shake hands with the statue of Davey Crockett, and we watched couples trot about in their horse-drawn carriages. There were fountains, twinkle lights, and a quiet lull of the river to set a perfect romantic mood. We meandered downtown until we made our way back to the car to bust into our stash of chocolate chip cookies we baked the day of our departure.
We headed North towards Austin, where we pulled off into a rest area to spend the night. It was the first time either of us had slept at a rest area, so we were skeptical and worried about light and noise, but the site had great reviews on the free campsites' website. We decided to give it a try.
Let me tell you, friends. When we headed inside the facility, it was like we were walking into The Four Seasons. It was the fanciest, cleanest, rest stop you would ever be able to conjure up in your imagination.
After three days on the road and only a handful of wipes and some dry shampoo between me and full hobo status, the sight of an empty bathroom and running water materialized as a full-on luxury spa in a sort of hygiene mirage.
I struck a conversation with the janitor woman, standing in front of the sink in my PJs, shaving my armpits. She must have been used to this brand of crazy because she didn’t think anything of it when I plugged in my hairdryer and went for my toothbrush.
She gave me some recommendations about what we should see on our trip and told me about her experience moving to Texas 20 years ago while I finished my makeup.
I bounded out to the car, sparkling and minty fresh, meeting the clean and improved Alex on the walkway back to the car. We set up my phone in a pristine-covered promenade where we watched an episode of our trash-tv show of the moment. Then we moved our bags out of the back of the car into the front and got tucked into our little car nest before falling fast asleep.
April 25, Day 4 & Alex’s Birthday!
We took full advantage of our running water and glamorous clean bathrooms again in the morning before heading North towards Austin.
McKinney State Park
Our first stop was McKinney State Park where we checked out a couple of “waterfalls.” They were more like tall rapids to us Oregonians, but beautiful nonetheless. The first fall was overshadowed by the discovery of a football-sized turtle making his way across a rocky bank. We stopped to greet him but he was not interested in socializing or extending any “southern hospitality.”
It started to rain. It wasn’t a polite Oregon stutter rain either. This was a beast-unleashed downpour! Also unlike back home, this rain was warm. We quickly changed into our swimsuits and ran across to the upper falls where we had a REAL shower. The water drops fell as large as golfballs and bounced off the water several inches up our legs where we waded out across the upper falls.
A handful of black ducks, a heron, and three turtles shared the moment with us under a canopy of dripping trees in a white rock riverbed.
We got back into the car soaked to our bones and bending with laughter-sore bellies.
If we weren’t clean before, this surely should have done it.
We were mostly dry by the time we got to the pink sate capitol building in Austin. We happened to get there right as a free tour was starting, so we joined the group and made our way through the old building, stopping to see the portraits of Texas’ governors that spiraled up several flights of stairs, stopping to pop into the house and senate rooms.
A disturbing, huge, painting, "Dawn at the Alamo," by Henry Arthur McArdle, hanging in the Senate Chamber of the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas
Back outside the rain cannons paused to re-load, so we took the opportunity to repurpose the rest of our ceviche into multi-grain wraps. They weren’t the freshest creation, but they kept us held over until dinner.
This was Alex’s 24th birthday. To celebrate, we headed for Dallas to catch a Rangers game after gaining confidence that the rain had let up for good.
We checked into a cheap motel within walking distance of the stadium and enjoyed one of our favorite take-out meals: Chicken Tikka Masala while watching The Office’s “Dundees” episode on the TV.
The Rangers won at home, surely thanks to our attempt at putting together red and blue outfits out of our tiny shared carry-on. The carnival music and sounds of team spirit and the tangible anticipation of a pop fly are quintessential American sensations.
After a few days in the car, the motel room, no matter how basic, was glorious! We woke up feeling completely refreshed, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed.
April 26, Day 5
We started the day at the Fort Worth Stockyards where we just happened to walk up as they were starting their daily longhorn cattle drive parade. The massive critters swung their 7-8ft spread of horns from side to side in what looked like an awful headache of a balancing act. After the parade, we climbed up the observation deck of the stockyard just in time to see the cows being driven back to their pens right below us. We had the privilege all to ourselves.
Our next stop was the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.
Five-year-old Katherine definitely believed that she would be a cowgirl when she grew up - I even had the pink boots to prove it. I watched every episode of Annie Oakley and wrote most of my elementary school papers on Calamity Jane or Slue-Foot-Sue.
The Cowgirl Hall of Fame was the fulfillment of my childhood dreams and even piqued my current interests. I loved seeing the history of cowgirl costume as it has evolved, getting right up close and personal with the beaded, fringed, and painted leather, wool, and cotton garments.
I got a kick out of Bob Wade’s Cowgirls exhibit, where an artist has enlarged and colorized antique photos of cowgirls from America’s Wild West. The fashion and hairstyles were epic.
They had a phenomenal Annie Oakley exhibit with ornate show tickets, brochures, and memorabilia from the Wild Bill Cody Shows she traveled with. My favorite was the playing card vouchers that read “Courtesy of Annie Oakley” that she had shot a heart or spade out of.
They also had a few holograms of Annie Oakley quoting from her autobiography that was magical to see.
We drove by Dallas’ famous “grassy knoll” right over the X where JFK was assassinated on our way out of town.
It was a beautiful day, so we decided to drive towards our destination of Galveston by way of Ennis’ Bluebonnet trails. We had our stroll “among the wildflowers” to stretch our legs and got back on the road to head South.
The infamous Texas super-rest-stop called Buc-ees was our next stop. We sampled a few types of Kolaches as “research” for my mom’s bakery, Hazella. They are white bread pastries filled with sweet or savory goodies. Ours were apple with cream cheese and streusel and a savory sausage with cheese. We approved and decided we will have to try to make some at Hazella.
Kolaches from Buc-ee’s
We’d had enough big city for a few days, so we skipped over Houston to get to our beach campsite outside Galveston. We took a ferry over to Bolivar Peninsula, leaving our car for the observation deck where the night offered a warm breeze and a soft dusting of stars.
Our campsite was a free stretch of beach down a dirt road where a few other campers were already asleep. Alex scampered up the sandbank behind us and insisted that I join him. When I got to the top all I could see was sparkle. There was a cleaning in the sky where you could see a much thicker canopy of stars, and the whole marshy valley below us was carpeted with fireflies. There was black, and then there were flashes of yellow light, so tiny you could hardly make them out.
When we got back down the bank, both dizzy and mesmerized, we climbed into the Subaru with the windows cracked just enough to hear the soft crashing of the waves 20 bars away. There was one party of campers still awake, splashing in the ocean well past the time we went to sleep, but they were far enough from us that it was more pleasant to hear them having a good time than annoying.
We’d just had a very Texas Day. Longhorns, Cowgirls, Bluebonnets, and Fireflies. It was this night that we felt like we’d truly made it to The South of our imaginations, and we couldn’t wait to wake up the next day to experience even more.
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