R and J in the USA

We entered Texas from the border just south of Las Cruces, New Mexico into El Paso. It feels so long ago and far away at the time of this writing. Well, it was 11 days and 1,500 miles ago, so, that feeling is apt.

One thing we have learned in our travels, never listen to when someone says “Oh, don’t go there, it’s not worth it.” It is usually coming from someone that stumbled upon a certain experience when what they were looking for was vacation of some kind. We are not on this trip to go on vacation, though we have gotten to enjoy countless vacation-worthy spots. We are on this trip to get to know the United States of America. We are as interested in seeing the empty and rundown towns as the bustling and vibrant ones. We are as interested to see the dusty roads as the lush ones. We also both happen to love scenery of every shape and form – the color brown does not depress us and miles and miles of flat lands does not bore us. We are interested in the deserts, the forests, the mountains, the farmlands, the wetlands, the dry lands, the badlands and the good lands. We want to see it or as much of it all as we can physically get to and safely get through. Like getting to know a person, you don’t really know them until you have seen them ugly cry or stumble into a day with bed head or lose their cool in their most cringe-worthy moments and vice versa. We want to get to know this country and how people and life of all kinds are living in it or don’t live in it anymore.

All of this is a preamble to our first stop in Texas, one of the places that someone said to us somewhere along the way, “don’t bother going to El Paso”. It having been one of the places Julie was inexplicably excited to see, boy are we glad we bothered. For some reason, we found it almost mystical to be driving along a highway running parallel to a fence with barbed-wire atop it and Mexico in view on the other side of it. Why? We don’t know. We’ve both been to San Diego before, which is every bit as close to Mexico as El Paso. And, we’ve both been to Mexico before, but still, there was something so exotic to us to be in this spot and to see big signs hovering over the highway every couple miles warning drivers to beware of surprise pedestrians on the highway. It took Ryan a moment to put together what that was referring to. Julie found herself pondering the realities behind signs like that. “It’s so hard for me to imagine what a person must be experiencing to want to get out of the country they are in or into another country so much that they would face such obstacles and odds – barbed wire, crossing a highway, a river, whatever other challenge and face the potential consequences awaiting on the other side. I can certainly intellectually imagine it and empathize and understand or try to understand, but to viscerally understand it, that is so far beyond my life experience.” Julie reflected, grateful for the privileges she had grown up with. After Julie shared her ponderance with Ryan he said, “I knew that’s what you were going to say.” Turns out, in a marriage, you can kinda get to know each other pretty well, especially when that marriage includes living in a 120 square foot mobile tin can and spending nearly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with each other. 

We have seen Mexican influence in many states in the west and southwest, whether in culture, food or decor, but there was no place other than the downtown streets of El Paso that reminded us so much of Mexico itself with its open air shops boasting items to buy stacked in bountiful color amidst hand painted signs and a bustling sidewalk life. We got to see some of the more upscale neighborhoods of downtown El Paso and some of the more humble and rough and tumble streets, often separated by only one stoplight. 

Before entering into El Paso, Julie had somehow gotten the image in her mind of El Paso as a small and dusty town with one small main drag and a distinctly Texas feel. That image was immediately turned on its head when we entered the city.

”Whoa?! El Paso is not a small town at all – its a huge city! Did you know this?” Julie exclaimed.

”Yup.” Ryan said. As a general rule, Ryan came into this trip knowing more about American geography and culture than Julie. He already knew the capitals of all 50 states and could easily list all 50 states in alphabetical order. He even “showed off” once when Julie challenged him to do it in reverse alphabetical order, a gauntlet he threw down without breaking a sweat. He knew the interstate roads, where they started and ended and where they went through. If we rolled into a state or town, he knew which universities were there. He knew the interstate rivalries and geological features worth putting on our itinerary. Ryan is just that kind of guy – a guy that seems to know stuff and is worldly without being flashy about it. So, it is not a rarity for Julie to be enlightened on this trip while newly discovering something that Ryan already knew. But, though Julie was not at Ryan’s level, she came into the trip knowing a few things and generally educated about her home country. But this was the first time that Julie’s expectation of a place was so patently wrong and so distant from its reality. 

“Boy, am I glad we came to El Paso! I never knew!” The Texas education was fully underway from the word go.

We also were greeted at our first Texas rest area with the first monument to the confederacy. We had taken note on our trip thus far that busts and pictures and street names and building names all bearing the likeness of one of our most famous presidents, Abraham Lincoln, had abounded in nearly every state we went to and more than any other figure, even more than George Washington. We had postulated that that would likely become more scarce once we circled down into the south. Texas was our first state in a long while that we saw little mention of this iconic figure. Most of the figures we saw streets, cities and buildings named after and monuments and busts commemorating were distinctly Texan names. Heroes and leaders from Texan lore or born and bred in its borders. Many of these were people whose names we were only distantly familiar with. Sam Houston’s name was everywhere. We knew only of the city named after him before our time here in Texas and Julie only learned his first name while here in the state. Julie never realized that Davy Crocket was one of the men who died bravely in the Alamo and the speaker of one of Texas’s most proud and famed quotes. She only knew him to be as the song said, “king of the wild frontier”. The famous quote, “Victory or Death”, had been vaguely familiar to us, but we didn’t know of the Texan that had said it, a massive figure in Texas history, William Barret Travis who also, as legend tells it, is the origin story for the phrase of “drawing a line in the sand”, which is what he did at the Alamo before it was overtaken in defiant bravery. These are three of the figures that loomed largest as we traveled the land of Texas and learned about its modern life and the history that built it.

After having some delicious eats at a Peruvian/Mexican restaurant in El Paso called Amar, which means “to love” in Spanish, we headed to our next stop, Guadalupe National Park. The desert mountain setting was absolutely stunning – with the desert colors greeting us in the morning in sharp and crisp form. We didn’t have time to take any of the 4-8 hour hikes that hikers could take into the steep and craggly Guadalupe Mountains, but we did have enough time to take in a beautiful short hike in some of its lower lying and less rugged terrain. We passed by cacti and yucca plants and rocks embedded with thousands of tiny little fossils. 

Our next stop was actually not in Texas at all, but a quick dip slightly northward into New Mexico to take in Carlsbad Caverns. It being only 30 minuets from Guadalupe and, thanks to Julie’s insistence on seeing El Paso, would have meant adding 4 hours of driving to see Carlsbad during our official New Mexico time, we felt adding a New Mexico coda was the better use of hours. We did see one of our most apt “welcome to Texas” signs at the entryway to Carlsbad Caverns, however when the truck in front of us that was there to get a picture of the entryway sign had pulled up slightly onto the curb. Why? We don’t know. We imagine it was just cause. There was plenty of room to pull over without pulling up onto the curb. We saw the Texas license plate and felt that was all the “welcome to Texas” we needed. 

After leaving Carlsbad Caverns, we made our way across I-10 through Big Springs, Texas, a small town that reminded us of some of the more worn spots in upstate NY and we landed in Abilene for the night. Julie had grown up listening to her father’s country music mix tapes. Two of her favorite songs she grew up listening to had their namesakes here. Abilene and Amarillo. While planning our itinerary, Julie was bummed to see we just wouldn’t be able to make our way up to Amarillo without adding at least 8 hours on to do so and so she would settle for getting to see what she hoped, according to the song, would be the prettiest town that she’d ever see. Unfortunately, after a full day of hiking and driving, we got in late enough that we didn’t see any of Abilene driving in and after a morning of tending to logistics like laundry and various dumpings and refilling, we wouldn’t have time to drive through it before leaving. So, we’ve been in Abilene, but can’t say we saw much of it at all.

Our next stop was the Fort Worth Stockyards and Cowtown Coliseum. Well, we’d like to say we were well prepared for what was coming, but, if we are being honest, it was, quite literally, our first rodeo. Actually, it wasn’t even technically a rodeo. We had tickets for the 2:30 show which was called the “Ultimate Bullfighters”. The rodeo championships had been going on the week before, including the night before, but we just couldn’t make it in time for that. This show was still exciting to us to get to see real cowboys perform various feats and tricks with wild bulls charging at them. Julie found herself feeling mildly conflicted internally – loving the pageantry, the athleticism and the acrobatics of it all and couldn’t get herself to stop wondering what the bulls thought of the whole thing. (If any Texan is reading this, Julie can imagine them rolling their eyes at the silly New Yorker just about now).  But there was no question, we had a blast, we were profoundly impressed and entertained, and perhaps more than anything, we were happy to partake in a piece of Texas and western culture that was completely foreign to us. The most entertaining moment for sure was inbetween the bullfighting when they had members of the audience come out and compete in silly and fun rodeo themed games. One included an easy enough obstacle course made difficult by the fact that participants had to navigate it while wearing “drunk glasses” which apparently make you feel dizzy and spinny like you are deeply inebriated. One after the other, perfectly sober and stable humans struggled to step over a one-foot tall bar without knocking it over or kick a football and then sit down in a chair without using their hands. All easy tasks without the glasses and it was entertaining to watch them devolve into a stupor. But the funniest thing BY FAR was when the second to last contestant who was actually fully inebriated in the real way, put those glasses on and was the ONLY one to absolutely CRUSH that course and take it on with ease. Then, when he took the glasses off to give the MC a high five in his glory, he face planted right into the soft dirt of the rodeo floor with all of the enthusiasm of a 6 foot plus something, drunken, towering Texan. He got back to his feet with his enthusiasm and pride undiminished and fully intact. It was one of the funniest things we’ve seen on this trip by a Texas mile.

We had a great time in the Fort Worth Stockyards. It was a definite scene and a great way to really kick off our time in central Texas. We would say, if you were to fuse Rodeo Drive and Disneyland and then dip whatever you came up with in a thick cowboy candy coating, you’d get the Forth Worth Stockyards. It was decked out with festive cowboy holiday spirit and the streets were lined with pageantry and the cowboy equivalent of carnival fare and the shops were filled with cowboy wear with a pricetag that was Texas sized too. It was such a distinct and fun scene that you barely noticed how concentrated it was until you walked three or four blocks in either direction and the pageantry suddenly faded into the lowkey vibe of a Texan small town. We ended the evening with our first Texas bbq and the first time we’d had bbq on the trip since Montana. We had specifically been waiting until it was geographically relevant cuisine and we were excited to dive in. The bbq we started with was good solid bbq. We enjoyed it, but it was nothing we felt the need to travel back to Texas for…but we would have such bbq before we left the state. Still, it was delicious and made for great leftovers too.

We finished out the evening with Ryan giving Julie the Chrismas present of going with her to see the movie Wicked at a Fort Worth AMC. Even though that act had absolutely nothing to do with Texas, it did give us cause to drive through Fort Worth and get to see what the city looks like outside of the cultivated scene of Forth Worth Stockyards, which was neat.

Our next stop was a Cracker Barrel parking lot 20 minutes away from the Dallas Love Field airport where Julie would drop Ryan off to head home for Christmas. Julie had wanted to stay on the trip for the whole 10 months of it and had been looking forward to her 3 days solo on the beaches of Padre Island National Park for, well, for the duration of the trip. Even though we knew we’d both be super happy about being alone once we parted, we went through the same show again and again, not really wanting to part when the time came, and then quickly happy as clams for the solitude once it did.

Julie spent the morning working on the itinerary for the next month of states after Texas sitting in the cell phone lot. Then she ventured into Dallas to treat herself with a Christmas massage and acai bowl before heading south. 

Her first stop of the night would be the Cagle Recreation Area where she was looking forward to beginning her solo time and couldn’t wait to start working on some of the projects that we just hadn’t had time to work on constantly being on the move. Julie had two encounters worthy of their own posts during her stay and you can read about them both in our People Along the Way section. 

After a lovely stay by what Julie learned was actually a treacherous lake that had, tragically, claimed its most recent drowning victim only weeks before, Julie headed south to Houston for one of her most anticipated stops of the trip – NASA’s Space Center. Her favorite parts of the visit were seeing the absolutely massive shuttles and engines on display and the movie showing astronauts attempting to find words to describe what it is like to see the earth from outer space. It being Christmas Eve, some of the really exciting tours weren’t available, so she would leave without seeing the astronaut training facilities or Mission Control, but it was still pretty fantastic.

Julie had gotten a later start to Houston than planned thanks to a wonderful and spontaneous Christmas Eve lunch she had at the campsite that you can read about in our People Along the Way section, so she was unsure if she would reach her goal to wake up on the beach Christmas morning without needing to drive anywhere. But, she left Houston at 5PM and, after a swing by the grocery store to quickly restock, Julie took on the 4 hour drive to a first-come, first-serve campsite with her fingers crossed that when she rolled in at 10PM, there would be a spot waiting for her. There was.

There aren’t words to describe how much Julie loved her time at the Malaqite Campground on Padre Island National seashore, so pictures will have to suffice. She spent Christmas in 74 degree weather. The white on the ground was sand and Julie enjoyed spending the day either soaking in the sun and views on the roof deck of the van, hanging out on the beach or hanging in the van with the doors wide open. There was also a special sense of camaraderie and instant neighborhood among the 40 some RVs and campers that had chosen this spot as their place to spend the holidays. Julie got to speak French with her neighbors that were here to get away from teh snow in Quebec. Anyone who knows Julie, knows this made her already amazing day. Julie got two wonderful and separate invitations to share in a Christmas lunch or dinner. She was touched by both, but at this point, so deep in the bliss of her festive solitude and opportunity to write and read to her heart’s content without an itinerary to keep an eye out for that she did her best to graciously decline both. 

For her third night at Padre, Julie had been thinking and mulling over whether to stay at Malaqite or whether to drive a few miles down the road to do something she had never done before but had read about – beach camping. On one of Julie’s runs she had ran to the section of the beach where beach camping is allowed and there were lines of cars and campers stretching out into the mist right there at the water’s edge. Julie was intoxicated, excited and also nervous about how the van would handle the sand. It was clear that the sand was hard-packed in some spots and there were other spots where it was the kind that would just suck tires right into it. She had read reviews on line and read stories of some camper vans that had gotten stuck in certain spots. From what she could tell, this spot was one that was safe to go for, only a few spots at the entrance to the beach that would possibly give any trouble. She was nervous about it, but then figured, what’s the worst case scenario – I have to call AAA again, or maybe some nice strangers will help me out like our last two such experiences. And, she thought, there is no way I am coming all the way down here and not taking advantage of the chance to camp right on the beach.

Eventually, Julie bit the bullet and went for it and the van handled it all just fine. And the payoff was worth getting stuck anyways. Again, what can words say to describe such a delight. We’ll have to let the pictures try to communicate.

At the visitors center, Julie learned about how the currents make it so that a fair amount of garbage ends up embedded in the sands of the gulf beaches. Julie took a little time to fill one of the free bags they give out for litter retrieval with all manner of plastic detritus – bottle caps, plastic bags, large slivers of non-descript plastic and whatever else sadly washed up on shore. Julie actually has a passion for garbage (yes, you read that right) and waste management and spends hours thinking about how to solve the myriad problems posed by it, so believe it or not, she actually really enjoyed this opportunity to see some of the issue in a very real, non-abstract sense – not just something to read about or watch in a video, but to actually be somewhere to see the problem and get to contribute in the teeniest of ways with a walk up and down the beach with a yellow bag in hand.

To say Julie enjoyed her time in Padre Island would be the understatement of the trip. It would be like saying that Utah had some neat natural features (you can read more about what we think of the features in Utah in our Utah section) or that the Grand Canyon is “just a big hole” (you can read more about what we think of that in our Arizona section). 

Originally, the next stop was going to be the San Antonio airport to pick up Ryan at 11:45 and then head together to the Alamo, but thanks to a flight delay, Ryan needed to reroute to a a 7:15 PM arrival in Austin. Julie headed to San Antonio to take in the Alamo solo. Luckily, Ryan had seen it before – and he had not forgotten it.

Julie arrived at the Alamo and was struck immediately. You can read more about what struck her in a separate post. 

She left the Alamo impacted, enriched and with a burning curiosity to hit the Texas State History Museum the next day.

Julie made her way to pick up Ryan in Austin and was excitedly awaiting him with a few Christmas presents to welcome him back, having enjoyed wearing the holiday presents he had given her before leaving.

The next morning, we headed to the Austin suburb of Pflugerville for our Texas 5K. You can read more about the race in our 5K section.

We set off for a jam-packed day that would include a stop to the LBJ Presidential Museum and Library, the Bullock State History Museum and the Texas State Capitol. Each is worth its own write up, but there isn’t enough time to give them each the writing they deserve. We can leave it at the fact that we deeply enjoyed each and Julie was imbibing Texas and US history at every turn. 

After a morning race and a day filled with lots of walking and reading, we both had our hearts set on one thing for dinner. Texas barbecue.

Julie wanted to hit a famous bbq place and we picked Terry Black’s in Austin. We had read reviews that it was expensive but worth it. We left with the feeling that both of those adjectives were both apt and a serious understatement. We both intended to order only a humble amount, knowing we’d need to empty our refrigerator in 3 days while we left for Hawaii. We both failed miserably. By the time we sat down, our plates were loaded with more meat than we thought possible. We both agreed that the pork ribs were very good, but that we’d had better. But when it came to the brisket and the beef ribs, it was in a world we had never imagined, let alone visited. Holy wow were those good. And, shall we talk expensive? We thought we would leave with a bill of $80 or $90 dollars. For a dinner for 2, that’s a good amount of money we thought. Nope, our total bill for a dinner at a place that uses bright red cafeteria trays was $200! (That included our gratuity) We were gobsmacked. It turns out the single beef rib that Julie selected had weighed in at 1.6 pounds (they charge by the pound) and cost $60! That is $60 for one rib! Well, that 1 rib could also easily have fed Julie for a good week. And after taking the first bite, Julie conceded that it was worth every single penny! If we went there again, we’d have to be more strategic and reserved in our ordering, but for a one time experience, we were fully on board for our expensive, gluttonous, carnivorous adventure. 

Our next stop was deeper into Texas’s famed hill country. We headed for Wimberly, TX where we intended to get Julie’s swim At Blue Hole Regional State Park. There were a handful of swimming holes in the region that Julie was chompin gat the bit to get into, until realizing that they all had a swimming season that ended in late September. We enjoyed a quick stop in the infinitely charming town of Wimberly before heading back to Austin to swim in the Barton Springs Pool, a spot we found that was open year round and proceeded to be easily the coolest swimming pool either of us had ever seen. Not only was it a happening and vibrant scene complete with a drumming group, an acro yoga session going on and people of every age and walk of life enjoying this incredible urban oasis, it was a 3 acre long natural pool made out of the Barton Creek that flowed through and was home to the Austin salamander. 

When we got back into the van to hang for a few more minutes before leaving, we both found ourselves feeling the most relaxed we had felt all trip. We don’t know what was in that water, but we know we loved being in it.

We drove the 1.5 hours to an RV park in Waco while scrambling to do some last minute accommodation planning for our quickly approaching Hawaii trip before heading to Dallas the next morning for our final Texas experiences. We had been planning to visit the Sixth Floor Museum to have a moment of remembrance for the tragedy of JFK’s assassination, but the museum was closed on a Monday. We wandered through Dealy Plaza and felt the solemnity of the spot, especially the spot with the white X painted on the road.

Our last stop was something Julie planned as a surprise finale to our Texas experience. We were going to leave Texas going out with a bang, literally. We are not gun people. Ryan has handled and shot a gun a few times in his life decades ago, Julie had never even touched one. It’s hard to say you traveled the USA with the intention to really get to know our country without ever having shot a gun before. We pulled into the Texas Gun Experience in Grapevine, TX just north of Dallas and met up with our instructor Chandler. Chandler took us through gun safety, gun grip and gun stance and before we knew it, we were at the range going through a 50 count box of ammunition. Ryan was pretty sure Julie was going to be good at this and that she was going to like it. He was right. We both walked away with a handful of bullseyes and, more importantly, a stronger sense of safety and confidence around a firearm and more of an understanding of why people that love their guns love their guns. Chandler was the perfect guide through the experience, making us feel safe and comfortable each step of the way, explaining everything clearly and making sure to shoot off as many gun puns as he could to keep the mood light. It was safe to say that we had a blast. We felt it was the perfect way to close up our Texan adventure.

All that is left now is to pack our bags and empty out our refrigerator. It’s hard to feel sad about leaving a state when the next one on the docket is Hawaii, but we certainly know we will think fondly of our time in the Lone Star State.