I realized near the end of 2017 that although I had taken a trip to Oregon in June, I hadn’t been to any new places the whole year. I decided that needed to change as soon as possible. As my travel schedule is restricted to the summer and winter (with track and cross country keeping me put in the spring and fall), that meant I needed to come up with something quick or wait until the summer. I briefly thought about heading to DC/Philly/Delaware – a trip I’ve been tentatively planning in order to knock Delaware off my list of states to visit, but quickly decided I had no interest in braving the potential winter weather in that part of the country.
Driving somewhere would keep costs down, so heading south in my car seemed the best option. I had been to Texas before, but not to Austin or San Antonio, so I started planning with that in mind. I scheduled and booked all the necessary things, but as the end of January approached, part of me just wanted to stay home in my normal routine. It’s all too easy to just fall into the comfort and familiarity of our daily lives, even if one does enjoy traveling. I packed up my car on Saturday, January 27 and hit the road on Sunday. My first stop was the Oklahoma City bombing memorial. I immediately shook my head at the part of me that would rather have just stayed home. The whole trip was already worthwhile. I really didn’t have an idea of what the memorial was. The block of the street on which the Federal Building formerly stood has been converted to a reflecting pool. Parts of the exterior walls of the building itself still stand – broken concrete edges with steel rebar sticking out as a reminder of the destruction. Empty chairs sit in the building’s place, one for each victim of the explosion. It’s a powerful exhibit and a beautiful memorial.
I continued walking around downtown Oklahoma City for a couple hours. It’s really nice, though the public spaces, which I’m sure are full of beautiful vegetation in the spring, remain shades of brown in the winter.
I stayed the night in Ardmore, Oklahoma and started off Monday by heading straight to AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, home of the Dallas Cowboys. This was my third NFL stadium tour and I’m already regretting all the past times where I was in very close proximity to other stadiums and it didn’t even occur to me to take a tour. I’d like to start collecting them just like states. It’s nothing special if you’re not an NFL fan, but since I am, it was pretty cool to get to stand on the star at midfield and to be in the booth Cowboy’s owner Jerry Jones watches the games from.
From there I went to downtown Dallas and walked around for a couple hours. This included a trip to Dealey Plaza where JFK was assassinated in 1963. It’s a surprisingly small area, but I suppose that was part of the problem – funneling a motorcade through a narrow turn surrounded by tall buildings. Nowadays every room would be checked, but only because we learned the lesson 55 years ago.
Dallas, like OKC (and Austin as well), had some very cool spaces that just seem pretty dreary this time of year. The farther north you go in the U.S., winter gives everything a clean death and the crispness of it all can be beautiful. In Oklahoma and north Texas, everything looks like fall has just drug on for too long and winter never came. The colors of autumn have faded into a dead, ugly mush.
Austin was one of the main drivers for my trip. In the creative world, especially, it’s more and more seen as this liberal haven in the middle of Texas – like Lawrence here in Kansas, but with ten times the population. While I had a good day in Austin, what became clear was that if you’re just sightseeing by yourself for a day, what does it matter if a lot of the people you aren’t even talking to like to write or paint or agree with you politically?
So, I spent two hours of my day waiting in line for BBQ at Franklin BBQ. Though he just opened in 2009, Franklin BBQ has developed a reputation for being one of the best (if not THE best) BBQ places around. I first remember seeing him in a credit card commercial several years back and he’s also featured in the movie Chef. Jon Favreau’s character buys meat from Franklin to sell out of his food truck. They’re so used to lines outside before they open that there’s a pile of lawn chairs available for patrons, as well as beer and coffee for sale while you wait. They don’t even have a set closing time – their store hours are listed as “11:00 – sold out” (which is usually by 2:00 or 3:00pm). Now, I wasn’t able to compare it to other places, but the brisket I ate was absolutely worth the wait. The cliché “melt in your mouth” absolutely applies.
Then I walked around downtown by the Texas capital building and the University of Texas. In the evening I went to catch the Oscar nominated Call Me By Your Name at the Alamo Drafthouse Theater. I know you shouldn’t normally go to a movie on vacation, but the owner/founder of the Drafthouse theaters has been a guest on one of my favorite podcasts (Doug Loves Movies) and I think seeing a movie there is a worthwhile experience as it’s a different type of theater. I’m not a fan of foodservice during a movie, but their set up makes it as unobtrusive as possible.
Another early start Wednesday, driving through dense fog, took me to San Antonio and the Alamo. At first it seems odd that the Alamo is in downtown San Antonio until you realize the city was built around it. And the Alamo isn’t just the mission/church part we always think of but refers to the whole complex, most of which is gone now. I also quickly realized I had made a mistake in not budgeting more time for San Antonio. Unlike Austin (or even Dallas), San Antonio is a sightseeing city. Beyond even the Alamo and its famous River Walk, there’s the La Villita Historic Arts district and the Tower of the Americas – and that’s just what’s all within a short walking distance downtown. I didn’t have time for the other Spanish missions to the south or other parks and various cites.
In San Antonio I finally felt that I was far enough south that the brown, eternal fall gave way to the tropical region where things stay always green and neither fall nor winter significantly scar it. I was reluctant to leave so early in the afternoon, but I had more than eight hours of driving ahead of me and had already spent longer than I had planned in San Antonio. I should start learning my lesson at some point. I try to move too fast through too many things and always underestimate certain places. In Europe, for example, I underestimated Munich and Florence but found them far more memorable than, say, Berlin or Madrid.
And, ironically, it was in San Antonio, not Austin, that I met an artist. This year is the 300th anniversary for San Antonio and the guy behind the counter at a little art shop I visited in La Villita was one of 300 local artists selected to help commemorate the event. They were each assigned a year at random from San Antonio’s history and tasked with creating an original piece centered around that year. He said his year (1731) was on display across town with 49 others from the first 50 years and they planned to change them out every couple of months to get all 300 in. He also gave me a couple of recommendations both for in town and as I continued west through Texas.
I left San Antonio and drove seven hours straight west through increasingly smaller towns and patchy cell phone service. Just after Del Rey, Texas I got directed through a border patrol stop. It hadn’t even occurred to me that you could be stopped without ever leaving the country. They had a drug dog walk around my car and asked where I was headed, but my northern European ancestry allows me to benefit from racial profiling. They didn’t even ask for my ID and I was quickly on my way again. My first destination of the night was the 12 Gage restaurant in Marathon, TX, north of Big Bend National Park. Marathon has a population of less than 500 people but somehow managed to have the fanciest restaurant on my trip, recommended to me by the artist I met in San Antonio. I passed on the $49 steak, opting for a $17 chicken Caesar salad. It’s open for just three hours in the evening and is connected with the neighboring hotel. I still don’t understand how it stays afloat even with traffic coming in and out of Big Bend.
It was past 8:00pm now and dark. I drove 90 minutes south into the heart of Big Bend National Park with the growing mountains appearing as silhouettes under a full moon. The moon was so bright that I was able to pitch my tent without really using my flashlight. It was so still and quiet that I could hear the snoring from a neighboring tent twenty meters away and the distant scream of mountain lions as I slept poorly, bundled up on a cool night.
Thursday was spent hiking and exploring the park. I think a mix of cities and nature is a great balance to seek when traveling. I never realized how impressive the mountains of Texas were. How many of us even realize Texas has mountains? There were a few moments throughout the day when the park became the quietest outdoor place I had ever been. I’d get a little way up a trail and have a seat on a rock – no people, no birds, no wind, just silence. Add to this that the temperature stayed in the mid-60s with an overcast sky – so that I was neither hot nor cold all day – and I experienced moments of basically no external stimulus. It was just me and the mountainous, rocky landscape. There’s a definite beauty to silence and isolation at times. It was a great day. The only downside was having to cut my reflection time short more than once due to having overemphasized staying hydrated and needing to run back to a restroom!
I had another long day of driving on Friday, so I got an early start (packing up my tent again in the moonlight) and leaving the park by 6:00am. I had a hotel booked in Lawton, Oklahoma which I managed to reach just after 4:00pm. I’m usually pretty good about scouting things out online ahead of time, but this place was sketchy… the whole town (at least the area I ran around in) was rundown with torn-up and overgrown sidewalks covered in cigarette butts. The hotel was the kind of place where you worry your credit card might pick up an STD. I pulled up Wikipedia and discovered Lawton does indeed have one of the highest crime rates in the U.S.
I seriously considered just powering through all the way home, but I had already paid and planned on visiting a couple of ancestral grave sites in the morning. I survived (as did my car in the parking lot, which I was more worried about) and tracked down the burial locations of my great grand parents and, at a different cemetery, my 3x great grandmother who I know little to nothing about. It’s still an interesting connection to feel and to stand there and think how you owe your existence partly to a woman who lived from 1838-1930.
When I travel, I’m not really one for souvenirs. I may buy a few t-shirts, but the main thing I collect is pictures – perhaps to a fault. I’m constantly snapping a pic with my phone or camera, often going back and forth between the two depending on how I’m trying to frame a shot. But this trip was yet another reminder that the real reason to travel is all things that your pictures just can’t do justice to. Time to plan the next one.