Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2015 i Texas Highways Magazine

Oh, the places we will go this season—shopping for this and that, holiday partying here and there, up the attic ladder for lights and ornaments, and back to the store for more. But where to go to catch that Christmas spirit? Across the state, holiday memories await at Christmas tree farms, ice-skating rinks, lighting displays, Las Posadas processions, and plentiful parades, pageants, and plays. Unwrap a few of our favorite Yuletide travel ideas in this issue, from Galveston’s Winter Wonder Island, with its Dickensian spin on the season, to Amarillo Botanical Gardens aglow. And who can resist the architectural gems in Waxahachie’s “Gingerbread City” this—or any—time of year? Seeking some Christmas merriment while drafting this column on a 95-degree day in October, I checked in with Chuck Lee of Ovilla,…

AMARILLO BOTANICAL GARDENS is at 1400 Streit Dr. The Christmas Garden of Lights runs 6-8 p.m. Nov. 28-Dec. 19. Admission by donation. A special preview on Nov. 27 is limited to 500 guests; tickets are $10 for visitors age 13 and up. Call 806/352-6513; www.amarillobotanicalgardens.org. IT’S 30 MINUTES BEFORE SUNSET AND THE crowd outside the gates of the Amarillo Botanical Gardens is stirring with anticipation. Tens of thousands of Christmas lights string the garden’s fourand-a-half acres, providing a colorful backdrop for at least three photographers who’ve entered early to shoot family portraits and a small video crew filming a model’s promotional portfolio. “The people in Amarillo and the surrounding area really get excited about the lights,” says Kevin Ball, executive director of the Gardens. “Some people even come out to…

ON A CHILLY DECEMBER EVENING, THE STREETS of Galveston’s historic Strand District are eerily still as a slow-moving fog rolls in off the harbor. Many of downtown’s touristy storefronts and busy-by-day eateries are closed at this hour. Yet, where we’re headed, the evening is just getting started. As we wander up the sidewalk, the distant clip-clop of a horse’s hooves pierces the stillness, resonating off rows of 19th-Century brick- and iron-front buildings that flank the streets. The ghostly echo peaks as one of Galveston’s famous horse-drawn carriages rounds a corner, lit by the soft orb of an amber street lamp. Amid the fog and ornate Victorian buildings, it’s like stepping into a Charles Dickens story. One could imagine the candle flickering in old Scrooge and Marley’s counting house in Victorian…

THE HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY made history in 1952 with the publication of a novel called Sironia, Texas. At 840,000 words, the book’s two volumes made up what was believed to be the longest novel in the English language at the time, dwarfing both Gone with the Wind (500,000 words) and War and Peace (670,000 words). Sironia and its multigenerational tale of early 20th-Century Southern aristocracy made a national stir as a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award. But nowhere did the novel garner as much attention as in Waco, the hometown of the book’s reclusive author, Madison Cooper Jr., who had written the entire 1,731 pages in secret. From the day it was published, many Wacoans believed the setting to be a thinly…

Snow in West Texas, while usually as fleeting as a sandcastle in the surf, tends to imbue the landscape with a diffused, quiet melancholy. Light appears gentle, boughs sparkle like diamonds with melting droplets, and boulders and mountains soften beneath majestic white mantles. On the following pages, we present snow-dusted images by landscape photographers whose luck (and attention to weather patterns) rewarded them—and us—with these ethereal West Texas portraits. In photographing snow, timing is everything. “This was an early snowstorm,” says Marathonbased photographer and writer E. Dan Klepper of the image on our opening spread. “You can tell that because of the berries, which are actually seeds of a sumac tree. Later in the season, they would have wrinkled up and dropped off. I was captivated by the sunlight coming…

CHET GARNER is the host of The Daytripper® travel show on PBS; www.thedaytripper.com. Rockin’ Rockport-Fulton While the bayfront community of Rockport-Fulton is actually two separate towns, it packs a coastal-combo punch unlike any other. And while many tourists flock to the beach during the summer months, a different sort of migration happens each winter, attracting trippers of all types. I decided to join them in going coastal in the cold, and I’ll never be the same again. 7:15 a.m. It felt strange heading toward the beach in a winter coat and hat, but I arrived at Fulton Harbor and shoved off for a morning cruise with Rockport Birding and Kayak Adventures. The boat, filled with birders from all over the world, crossed Aransas Bay in search of a bird so…

THE RECENT BESTOWING OF WORLD Heritage Site status to San Antonio’s five missions—the first attractions in Texas to receive this honor—has ensured an increase in the city’s already steady pilgrimage of visitors. And while touring the missions calls for a certain reverence, selecting a souvenir in the gift shop afterwards need not require such gravitas. And yet … do you really want to visit these Texas icons and then settle for a dinky refrigerator magnet? A flimsy postcard? A fragile coffee mug? Consider instead the Posy Collection’s Tex-centric needlework kits. Available at about a dozen parks and historic sites across the state, including the Alamo gift shop, the kits allow visitors to prolong the travel experience and to imbue a little bit of themselves into their keepsakes. “REMEMBER THE ALAMO”…

THE EAST TEXAS CITY OF Tyler has changed since I was a youngster, when only a few places served a bland version of the richly spiced cuisine favored south of the border. An influx of Hispanic families in recent decades, however, has spawned a variety of quality Mexican eateries. Three of my favorites—Don Juan Mexican Restaurant, Don Juan on the Square, and Mariscos DJ’s, all owned and operated by the Barron family— have rekindled my love of interior Mexican cuisine and culture. The Barrons serve the foods they grew up with in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. Eating at the Barrons’ restaurants takes me back to the summer I spent with my wife and kids in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Eating at their restaurants takes me back to…

Although we live in the very modern 21st Century, most people still retain some 19th-Century traits. Among them, consider our Charles Dickens-like fondness for seasonal celebrations around blazing fireplaces, whether they resemble Tiny Tim’s humble inglenook alongside the Cratchit family hearthstone or the fires roaring in Mr. Fezziwig’s office, transformed into a festive dancehall by holly and tinsel. Taking a moment to enjoy a fire’s cordial glow often ends up warming our hearts as readily as our hands. Perhaps we need fireplace moments now more than ever before, as the rising tide of our busy, noisy lives whittles thin the time once spent watching embers glow and sharing stories among friends. In the spirit of the season, we offer the following guide to welcoming hearths around the state. Some of…

TRAVEL IS THE GIFT WE GIVE OURselves. Think about it. There are the carefully wrapped gifts, the ones we save for and dream about. Some of those are the trips we make to far-flung places. But sometimes the big gift, the luxurious trip, can be closer to home. Rough Creek Lodge, tucked away on miles and miles of undulating ranchland just outside Glen Rose, is not a place I can afford to visit often, but with some planning I can give myself a getaway there once a year. It’s a place that has a uniquely Texan sort of luxuriousness, with the indulgence in all the right places: the linens, the beds, the fabulous food, the spa. There are certainly more active activities if one wants to make an effort, but…