Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2017 i Texas Highways Magazine

One of the few natural lakes in Texas, Caddo Lake’s bayous, wetlands, and backwaters cover about 26,800 acres in East Texas and Northwest Louisiana. OUR “ARTS & CULTURE” SPECIAL issue celebrates the beauty of Texas—from must-see public art to lovingly restored downtown theaters to breathtaking natural wonders. Narrowing down the state’s natural wonders to a manageable list was no easy task. After starting with our catalog of staff favorites and sifting through hundreds of reader responses on Facebook, we whittled our list down to about 20 finalists. While we originally intended to present the seven natural wonders of Texas to mirror the Seven Wonders of the World, we found some cuts just too painful to make. So we took the liberty of making our list Texas-size; our picks for the nine…

THE SOUNDS OF A SCREEN DOOR OPENING AND closing evoke powerful memories. My grandfather’s 1920 brick house in Dallas, where I spent a lot of happy time while growing up, had a screen door off the kitchen door leading to the backyard and another in front, on the screened-in porch. Sometimes they would shut with a muffled bang, as when Pop Pop and I slipped out before breakfast on warm August mornings to pick figs, and sometimes with a gentle squeak when the sun was finally dropping from sight and I would dash out to chase fireflies. The somehow reassuring noise of these doors in action signaled people I loved coming and going; it’s forever filed with memories labeled “comfort” in my psyche. Each room’s entry is hung with a…

Across Texas, eye-catching public art can be found standing along city freeways and waterways, clustered in town parks, and tucked within college campuses. Whereas some places celebrate the work of a single artist, others highlight a variety of talent, ranging from local artists to those of international acclaim. These sculptures represent recent commissions as well as established landmarks, and they vary from the traditional to the contemporary, with something for just about every taste. Best of all, they are free to see. Here are a few dozen worth exploring around the state. EL PASO Thanks to the city of El Paso’s active Public Art Program, this West Texas metropolis features multiple artworks along its busy thoroughfares. Several of these roadside attractions were inspired by the surrounding landscape. A 45-foot-tall, blue-gray…

CAN’T-MISS GETAWAYS Palestine 1 hour Dallas 1.5 hours Houston 3.5 hours San Antonio 5 hours WITH A WAGGLE OF HIS PEN, U.S. PRESIDENT John Tyler signed a bill to bring Texas into the United States in 1845. The following year, the state legislature approved a town in his honor in upper East Texas. Since then, Tyler has grown into a thriving city of more than 100,000 souls. Mike and Barbara Downs are the first two I meet. A little background: Their life sounds like the premise of a hit television show. A retired Army colonel and his New York-born wife, both working in the stressful whirl of Washington, D.C., decide to move south to operate a bed-and-breakfast in a historic Tyler home. The Downs’ 1859 Woldert-Spence Manor, built by one…

FALL IN WEST TEXAS MAY EVOKE IMAGES OF FRIDAY Night Lights, with whole towns rallying around their favorite football teams. But this autumn some of West Texas’ most prominent cities will be luring travelers with a different—but equally dramatic—kind of entertainment. In September and October, book festivals, writers’ workshops, and author appearances will enliven the cultural landscape from the Big Country to the Permian Basin and the Llano Estacado. Perhaps the best place for literature-loving travelers to begin a West Texas journey of words is Abilene. Officially designated the “Storybook Capital of Texas” by the Texas Legislature in 2015 for its delightful array of character statues from children’s literature, Abilene also stages the West Texas Book Festival Sept. 21-23. Now in its 17th year, the West Texas Book Festival has showcased…

THE STATE FAIR OF TEXAS, HELD EVERY FALL at Dallas’ Fair Park, is a feast for eyes, ears, and taste buds, with music, livestock shows, pig races, auto show, midway rides and games, and food. Especially food. Having a Fletcher’s Corn Dog and sampling the year’s crop of deep-fried culinary inventions are traditions as treasured as having your picture taken with Big Tex, the fair’s 55-foot-tall, talking cowboy mascot. Some of the canning contest entries qualify as works of art themselves. These people even make preserved zucchini beautiful. Partly because a good part of my childhood was spent stoking a 21-quart pressure cooker with garden produce, my favorite part of the fair is the canning competition. Interest in canning is as fresh as ever, says Kathy Bennett, the fair’s creative…

As Hollywood blossomed in the early 20th century, movie houses became the social and entertainment hubs of both small towns and big cities across Texas. But the advent of television’s free programming in the 1950s, a residential exodus to the suburbs, and the popularity of drive-in cinemas caused downtown marquees to go dark, one by one. As the movie industry shift ed to multiscreen cineplexes in the 1960s, most downtown theaters were torn down or repurposed as hardware or clothing stores, storage buildings, day cares, non-denominational churches, and the like. But in recent years, flickering excitement has returned to many of the historic downtown theaters across Texas. Some have been fabulously refurbished into world-class music venues, like The Kessler Theater in Dallas and The Heights Theater in Houston. In Greenville,…

IF YOU FOLLOW MY TRAVELS you know that I spend most of my time off the beaten path. While this philosophy lends itself to new discoveries, sometimes I end up neglecting well-traveled tourist destinations. In order to buck my own trend, I headed to Texas’ most-visited city—San Antonio—for an epic day trip directly on the city’s beaten paths. 8:30 A.M. No trip to this city would be complete without Tex-Mex, so I followed my stomach (and the crowds) to Mi Tierra, a 24-hour institution serving its signature dishes around the clock. The walls were decked with Christmas lights, flags, and piñatas of every shape and color—almost as bright as the 50-foot-long case of fresh Mexican pastries. I ordered a concha and coffee, which served as a nice appetizer for the…

IT’S A SATURDAY AFTERNOON, AND MESQUITE SMOKE from the barbecue pit perfumes the Castell General Store, a weathered old building that houses a grocery business, café, and saloon. The store is the center of activity in Castell, a tiny town hidden away in the Texas Hill Country west of Llano. Early in the week the store is quiet and unassuming. But as the weekend approaches, the place comes alive with food, music, and amusements that draw a range of visitors—from rugged outdoorsmen to those who prefer a bar stool, air-conditioning, and a plate of good barbecue. Getting to Castell takes time and patience. At the square in Llano, I turn west on Ranch Road 152 and drive 18 miles on a crooked twolane blacktop that roughly parallels the Llano River,…

PADRE ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE “Aromatic, salty air blew in off the water. Pelican formations cruised the shoreline. Seagulls and other shorebirds searched for food, and every minute the light transformed, making the water, clouds, and sand change colors. It’s a special place with rare species and isolated, undeveloped beaches—a national treasure and nature at her finest.” KENNY BRAUN GUADALUPE MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK “It feels so small at first, until you hit the trail and start to explore. It is pure Texas wilderness—a high mountain desert with the soul of a bygone era that we Texans have yet to forget or leave simply to the history books. Here, we hold on dearly to the past we love.” ANDREW R. SLATON HAMILTON POOL PRESERVE “The lagoon-like grotto and surrounding cliffs illustrate clearly…

SEPTEMBER’S TRAVEL SPOTLIGHT: PRAIRIES AND LAKES > Round Top Fall Antiques Shows FROM FIELDS OF TIMEWORN treasures to exceptionally curated tents of antiques, vintage shopping has never been better than it will be this fall in Round Top. More than 100,000 antiques hunters from across the country are expected to make their biannual trek to this tiny town as a slew of vendors open up shop. Events include the Arbor International Antiques & Interior Design Show, which celebrates its 20th anniversary Sept. 20–30; Zapp Hall, which celebrates 30 years Sept. 29– Oct. 7; the Marburger Farm Antique Show, which commemorated its 20th this past spring and returns Sept. 26–30; and the one that started it all—the Original Round Top Antiques Fair—which celebrates its 50-year anniversary Sept. 25–30. roundtop.org Want more?…

TRAVEL TALK WITH TRUE TEXANS Quote from Dat: Tackling Life and the NFL (TAMU Press); Illustration by John Kachik DAT NGUYEN HOLDS THE DISTINCTION OF BEING THE first and only Vietnamese-American to play in the National Football League. And he’s got a life story to match that accomplishment. Born in 1975 in an Arkansas refugee camp, Nguyen grew up in a Catholic Vietnamese shrimping family in Rockport. He joined the Rockport-Fulton Junior High football team in eighth grade and, despite his parents’ skepticism, found his calling. “I fell in love with the game,” he says. “The most intriguing thing to me about football is that everything is so challenging—the lineups, making a tackle, going out there and running or catching the football. The execution part was really the drive that…