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| where I went this month(s) |
I came to Texas on April 2nd of last year but the time I've spent focusing on visiting and learning about Texas was actually 5 months - November 2020 through March 2021. Unfair to spend so much more time here than in all the other states I've visited, but Texas is, after all, an enormous state acreage-wise (268,561 square miles), and thanks to COVID I had some extra time. Every time I started to think about getting back on the road, there'd be another flood of cases, and few of the states I wanted to visit were handling it well. After dealing with a couple of serious case surges of its own, Texas seemed to be doing as good a job as most, so I kept deciding to stay here.
I spent 4 months hunkering down at David & Anna's house, then spent a month in each of Oklahoma, Colorado and Kansas, and then the remaining 5 months on a tour to get to know the state I've spent more than half my life in (all added together). And despite all my years here, I learned a lot more than I expected.
You can see from the map above that even after 5 months of travel there are still some blank spots, especially in west Texas. But I also noticed that over time, that pink marker would fade or get rubbed off, so I had to keep re-marking the routes when I'd notice them. Still, you can see I did my best to cover a big area.
Texas's land
I grew up knowing that, because of its size and geographical position, Texas has a wide range of geographical features. But it's one thing to see the deep woods of east Texas on a trip, the deserts of Big Bend country on another trip, the Gulf of Mexico at Port Aransas or Corpus Christi on still another trip, and the Hill Country at other times. But seeing them all strung together, as I did, made me understand much more clearly than I ever had before just how much physical diversity there is here.
I grew up thinking of west Texas and the Panhandle as being, basically, a desert and always wondered why anyone would live there. All these decades later, I'm still not a fan of deserts but I have a much clearer appreciation for the attraction and beauty of that area. Montana may have the big sky country they claim, but west Texas too has skies without horizons. And it's rural enough that those huge skies are filled with stars - the McDonald Observatory, of international importance, is located in west Texas, after all.
This was my first time to travel in the Rio Grande Valley, and I now understand why it's seen as being so distinct from the rest of the state. It's agricultural in a completely different way than the farming in either east or west Texas, because the climate is different there. The Valley includes the longest stretch of border with our southern neighbor than is found anywhere else, and the area has been settled for hundreds of years by people with their roots in Mexico. Border towns often take on aspects of both cultures that meet there (as I saw in upper Maine), so these border towns showed heavy cultural influences from Mexico and early Spanish missionaries, as well as the settlers from the eastern US. I found them all vibrant places where capitalism is alive and well.
Although I'd visited and traveled through places in east Texas all my life, I never really understood the extent of the lush vegetation I saw throughout that region. It especially stands out in contrast to the spare landscape in the west - there there's no end to the view, but here the view lasts only as long as the next tree that blocks it. This is a good area for growing things, obviously, and grow they do. Again, in stark contrast with the west, there are far more towns in east Texas, and you're never more than 25 or 30 miles from the next town, with collections of houses scattered all along between them.
The Hill Country seemed to me to be west Texas that had been crinkled up into a constant series of hills. It was arid, with west Texas landscapes that were compressed because of occurring on hillsides instead of flat earth.
And finally there's the Gulf Coast. I really wanted to spend much more time along the coast than I did and was hampered because, in the winter, so many folks from the northern US were taking up camping spaces. Ideally I should have been here in October, to catch the time in between summer and winter travelers. I'm just lucky I spent so much time along the coast at other times in my life, so at least I know what's there.
The one glaring gap in the locations I visited is the cities. I went to El Paso, Fort Worth and Austin, and that's about it. Even though I passed through Dallas, I avoided the downtown area strenuously. Same with Houston and San Antonio. I would have liked to see these places from my new perspective as visitor in an RV, but each time I just felt like there was too much else to see to take the time.
And that's the real problem I had here: time. The distances everywhere - especially in west Texas - are enormous and took me hours just to drive through, let alone explore. And even though I spent 5 months looking around, I never felt I had enough time to see it all.
Texas's people
A woman I met in a campground in west Texas told me Texans are the friendliest people she's ever met. And others made similar comments to me. Being a native Texan, I'm glad they had that experience but it wasn't mine.
Almost all the people I met were pleasant and would talk if I asked them questions, but I've met many in other states who were much more open than I met here.
On the other hand, anything I asked for, I got - from simple conversation to mechanical assistance to directions. It's just that people didn't volunteer things, which surprised me. If anybody had asked me before this trip whether Texans are friendly, I'd have said yes without hesitation, but I wouldn't say that now. I don't know what's changed or when the change happened, but folks aren't the way I remember them growing up. A real shame.
Texas's drivers
I've spent the last 3 years using Texas drivers as an unfavorable standard against which I measured drivers in other states. That too is an attitude I'm changing. On this trip I've found the drivers here to be much like those in most other states. People were much more willing than I remembered to pull over to let me enter the highway, and they were no more reluctant than any other drivers to let me merge in front of them when I had to.
When I was driving in the vicinity of a large city, I found the traffic to be of the white-knuckle variety on the surrounding highways, but since I avoided those as much as possible, I didn't have to deal with it. In the more rural areas, the traffic was more laid back, just like the way of life.
Throughout the state, I encountered almost no tailgaters, unlike my memories of driving in Texas. And I was surprised to note that there weren't many excessive speeders either. I have no idea how to account for the changes I saw, but they made driving here for so many months much less nerve-wracking than I'd feared.
And while there were definitely sections of roads that needed major help from paving companies, in general, I could count on roads being reasonably comfortable, both in the pavement and in the directional signs. From interstates down to farm-to-market roads, I could assume driveable conditions. It was only when Google wanted me to turn down side streets in cities and towns, or onto county roads, that I started running into trouble. As I've always believed, Texas is a good state to drive in.
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| the previous plate, still frequently seen |
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| the current license plate |
What I didn't see that I wanted to see
Quite a bit, actually, despite all the extra time I spent here. I mentioned a number of things in my daily posts. But beyond those, there was a wide range of places I missed. As examples:
* The Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco and, more seriously, the Waco Mammoth National Monument, with fossils of Ice Age mammoths they're uncovering.
* All kinds of sights in the large cities, such as San Antonio's Alamo and Riverwalk.
* The smaller places also have attractions, such as Grapevine, in the DFW area, that has a glockenspiel in a 127' tall tower. When it chimes at noon and 6 PM, 2 gunfighters (9' tall and 250 pounds each) have a shootout. (You can't make this stuff up.)
* The small town of Comfort, near Fredericksburg, was settled in the 1800s by Germans looking for political and religious freedom. Then came the Civil War, and most of them - grateful for the protections and freedom they'd found in the United States - were strongly in favor of the Union. Texas voted to secede, however, and in that political climate minority dissent wasn't tolerated. Rather than swear allegiance to the South - let alone fight for the Confederacy - a large group of these German men tried to cross the border to Mexico. They were intercepted by Confederate soldiers, and many were severely wounded or killed. Instead of treating the wounded and burying the dead, the Southerners (gentlemen all) shot the wounded and left all the bodies to rot where they fell, an inhumanity that didn't inspire converts among the Germans. In 1866, Comfort erected a monument to honor the memory of those who were loyal to the Union. I'd wanted to see it and am sorry I missed it.
* In Irving, also in the DFW area, there's a work of art titled Mustangs of Las Colinas that's supposed to be the world's largest horse sculpture.
Of course with the virus, many places were closed, and even with those that were open I didn't feel comfortable going inside. As time went on and people became more convinced the virus was real and more aware of how to fight it, businesses started taking more precautions like limiting the number of visitors and requiring masks. But I still missed a lot out of fear. I'd look forward to coming back sometime when we're back to normal.
My conclusion
In general, I liked Texas. At times, I liked it a lot. It's a fascinating state, historically, physically, and culturally. I believe it has a great deal of promise that's not being realized because too many in charge - both of government and of industry - are wedded to the past.
Texas is no longer the state I grew up in, thank goodness. Although I found it comfortable to grow up here because my family was white and middle-class, I know that comfort was denied to many people. In the 1950s, Texas was a thoroughly majority-white state, and segregation was rampant and enforced with an iron fist.
Today, Texas is a minority-white state, with only 41% being what's called non-Hispanic white. Now, 40% are of Hispanic heritage, 13% identify as Black, more than 5% are Asian.
The Texas power structure - composed almost exclusively of Republicans at the moment - has apparently seen the writing on the wall and, believing politics to be a zero-sum game, is desperately trying to hang on to what they've had, rather than simply sharing power with newcomers and trying to open up their tent.
Darwin taught that change is the law of Nature, and those who change to adapt to a changing world will survive successfully; a group that has adapted only to a preferred habitat succeeds only as long as that habitat lasts. The world in general, and Texas in particular, has been changing dramatically.
I don't see those in power being willing to adapt to these changes but instead fighting as usefully as trying to stop the ocean's tide. That struggle is playing out in many ways - school policies, health policies, funding policies, voting policies. To me, the authorities are stubbornly insisting that Texas continue business as it's been for 50 years. What I was seeing as I traveled is an increasing sense that Texans are just as stubborn as their leaders and change is beginning to play out statewide.
Despite the number of Trump signs and flags I continued to see months after the election was over, I saw far fewer Confederate flags than I used to. Texans are not only becoming a different racial mix, they're becoming younger and increasingly open to ideas of fairness and inclusion. Things are changing here - slowly, it's true - but the more intransigent the leaders are, the faster change will come.
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