Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i Texas Highways Magazine

While we know there’s plenty to keep travelers busy across our vast state, we’re also aware that committed road-trippers don’t brake and turn around at the state line. In planning our feature story on the Guadalupe Ridge Trail, which extends 100 miles from Guadalupe Peak to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, we knew that stopping at the edge of Texas in a remote section of the Guadalupe Mountains would be giving the experience short shrift. So this month, we’re partnering with New Mexico Magazine to share the story of this dual-state treasure with our neighbors to the west. For our joint feature story, Managing Editor Wes Ferguson made his second trip to explore the Guadalupe Ridge Trail. As the fall 2017 artist-in-residence at Guadalupe Mountains National Park, he had spent…

RECORD TOWN 120 St. Louis Ave., Ste. 105, Fort Worth RECORDS AND THINGS STRANGE 608 Public Square, Llano For some time now, prognosticators have been predicting the total demise of records—you know, the old-fashioned discs that play musical sound—as well as the brick-and-mortar establishments that sell them. And yes, it’s true that CD sales are down, and more than a few record stores have shut their doors. But there’s good news for those of us who can’t imagine life without flipping through bins, admiring the physical objects for their creative covers, and listening to the tunes imprinted in their grooves. Across Texas, vinyl is doing more than spinning. Sales are surging. “And as stores see their sales flip from CD to LP,” says Steve Ray, program specialist for the Texas…

TEXAS WILDFLOWERS BURST into bloom on printed goods by Aletha St. Romain. A New Orleans native now based in Austin, St. Romain is a trained illustrator with a talent for bringing native flora to life in exquisitely detailed watercolor paintings. Prints of her colorful bouquets embellish notecards as well as aprons and tote bags made of 100-percent organic Texas cotton. You don’t have to wait until spring to enjoy the bluebonnets. She got the idea to paint wearable artwork when she met a woman who had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina. “She was so complimentary of my artwork. I offered to give her a painting, but she didn’t have any walls on which to hang art,” St. Romain says. “I asked if she’d like an apron so she could wear…

In 1886, 50 years after the Battle of San Jacinto, Austin painter William Henry Huddle set out to interpret a critical scene from the conflict with his painting, The Surrender of Santa Anna. Huddle’s oil-on-canvas work, which has hung in the South Foyer of the Texas Capitol since 1891, depicts the morning after the April 21, 1836, clash as Texian fighters presented Mexican Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna, dressed in the white pants of a private, to Texas Gen. Sam Houston, who is reclined with a battle wound to his leg. The decisive victory secured the rebels’ independence from Mexico, a turning point Texas honors annually on April 21, known as San Jacinto Day. Huddle’s painting includes more than 30 historical figures, among them scout Erastus “Deaf” Smith (seated…

Willie Nelson, this month’s cover subject, has a long history of helping to preserve the natural beauty of the Lone Star State through the Texas Department of Transportation’s “Don’t mess with Texas” campaigns. Nelson filmed his first DMWT public service announcement in 1989. In the 30-second video, he sits on a stool in the middle of Pace Bend Road in Spicewood and sings a version of his song “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” with an anti-littering twist. In 2016, the 30th anniversary of DMWT, Willie’s son, Lukas Nelson, filmed an advertisement in the same spot singing the same song. “I’m sure Dad got a kick out of it back in the day, and I get a kick out of it now,” Nelson told Austin NBC…

It was late, maybe too late, and now the sun was dropping behind the Guadalupe Mountains. As shadows spread over forests high on the eastern slopes, a sense of doubt crept onto the trail. Where was Texas? Over the next peak? Or the one beyond? Like the range itself, my path into the Guadalupes had risen near the southern edge of New Mexico, south of Carlsbad and east of El Paso. For about three hours, I had been hiking Camp Wilderness Ridge Trail, a lonely segment of a new, 100-mile-long super route called the Guadalupe Ridge Trail. Naively, I had expected to reach the state line with daylight to spare. Clouds swept across the sky. The trail circled the nearest summit, cinching the mountainside like a belt. Here and there,…

As a child, one of the first things I did upon arriving at my Mamaw Grace and Papaw Dorsey’s rambling fieldstone farmhouse in Kentucky was to open the cellar door off the main dining room. Slowly, I crept down the wooden stairs, allowing my eyes to adjust to the dim light. A single shaft of sunlight from the cellar window illuminated the far stone wall—or what would have been the wall had it not been obscured from floor to rafters by glistening glass-encased riches in every color of the rainbow. Wine-colored blackberry jams, crimson-hued strawberry preserves, ruby-red orbs of tomatoes in half-gallon jars, and glistening garnet jars of beets provided lush background tones to sunrise-gold peaches, butter-bright corn, alabaster-pale pears, snowy sauerkraut, grassy-toned green beans, and army-green glints of pickles…

Arts & Culture CENTRAL TEXAS Austin Moontower Comedy Festival April 24-27 At the eighth annual festival, experience a diverse and hilarious mix of comedians, podcasters, and performers from around the world, as well as a lineup of stellar local and regional talent, including stand-up, sketch, and musical comedy performances. The 2019 festival headliners include Jenny Slate, David Spade, and Sal Vulcano at the Paramount Theatre and surrounding venues. Paramount Theatre, 713 Congress Ave. 512-474-1221; moontowercomedyfest.com Blanco Wild Woman Weekend April 12-13 Past event activities include food and art tours, silent auctions, plant sales, shopping, live entertainment, karaoke, dancing, a 5K, yoga, painting classes, wine and chocolate pairings, self-defense classes, a taco and tequila experience, museum tours, film screenings, and mixology classes. Various locations, 2233 US 281. 512-750-6362; wildwomanweekend.org Fredericksburg Hill…

Julie Murphy was on the law school track when a little book named Twilight came out during her senior year at Texas Wesleyan University. The young adult vampire novel reignited a love of reading in Murhpy that she hadn’t felt in years. It also gave her the writing bug. “It was the first book that made me feel like maybe writing isn’t so far out of reach,” Murphy says, sitting at the kitchen table of her home just east of Fort Worth. “Maybe if this woman can write this admittedly ridiculous book about a sparkling vampire, maybe I can write one book that one person will read at least once.” “I think that’s what I was so excited about writing—people in unexpected places in Texas living really full lives.” College-age…

The March issue is a winner, especially “The Boogie Woogie Highway” article. I’ve been looking for a good excuse to visit East Texas, and now I have one. Frank Reisch, Dallas SMALL-TOWN TREATS Texas Highways posted just today about J & P Bar and Grill in Comstock. Funny how the universe points you in the right direction when you happen to be just passing through a small Texas town.Erik McCowan, Smithville I love me some Underwood’s! The barbecue, the rolls, the cobbler—and the memories! It was a big treat when my grandmother took us to Underwood’s.Linda Kitchens Gunn, Dallas My husband drove to Wiseman House Chocolates in Hico to buy truffles and toffee. Then he brought them with us to Spain to surprise me on Valentine’s Day. He’s a keeper!Joyce…

NEW TRACKS LLAMA RANCH BED & BREAKFASTS Cypress Road, Kyle. 512-847-3909 or 512-268-3211; llamatracks.com When David Allen plows fields or bales hay at his ranch on the Blanco River near Kyle, he’s following old footsteps: those of his great-grandfather, Ezekiel Edward Nance, a former Arkansas state treasurer who settled here in Hays County in 1853. But David is also making new tracks on the land where he grew up. He and his wife, Shyrle Allen, have turned their working ranch into a country getaway with a pair of authentically restored historic lodges—and about a dozen llamas. “We were trying to diversify,” Shyrle explains of both the rentals and the woolly Andean pack animals living the good life at New Tracks Llama Ranch Bed & Breakfasts. Despite the newness in the…

San Antonio 7.25 hours Austin 7.25 hours Houston 9.25 hours Dallas 5.75 hours Your first time in Canyon, you’ll be forgiven for wondering where this Panhandle community of about 15,000 gets its name. Heading into town, you pass beehives from a local honey farm, the sprawling campus of West Texas A&M University, and tidy brick houses. What you won’t see is anything resembling a canyon. The spectacular, 120-mile-long Palo Duro Canyon punches into the flat plains east of the city. It’s the second-largest canyon in the United States, but remains hidden until you reach its rim, where the ranchland drops into dramatic red, yellow, lavender, and white cliffs marked with hoodoos and caves. It’s one of the most majestic places in the state. But tucked away in the Panhandle, this…

It was the O.J. Simpson trial of its day. Reporters descended on the northeast Texas town of Jefferson to chronicle the tragic tale of Diamond Bessie with black ink and purple prose. Nobody recognized the dashing young couple Annie Moore and Abe Rothschild when they checked into a local hotel in January 1877. But when Moore’s body was found in the woods two weeks later, a bullet in her head, the mystery of Moore, aka Diamond Bessie, catapulted Jefferson into the national spotlight. The tale unfolded in dramatic fashion: Rothschild, the miscreant son of a prosperous Cincinnati jewelry family, had married Moore, forced her into prostitution up and down the Mississippi River, and beaten her when she didn’t earn enough money. Arriving in Jefferson under an alias, the couple’s glamorous…

The bats may be Austin’s preferred winged creature, but in Wimberley, it’s the butterfly that’s basking in the spotlight. Every April, the town celebrates life with the release of thousands of butterflies and fanfare to boot at the EmilyAnn Theatre & Gardens’ Butterfly Festival. The 21st annual event kicks off with an opening ceremony at the Wimberley Veterans Memorial to honor lives lost in the past year, and the day continues with food, crafts, games, bounce houses, and live music. Guests can celebrate the winged wonders with T-shirts, live butterflies in individual boxes, colorful butterfly wings and wands, and butterfly tiaras. In addition to the release of 4,000 butterflies and a live Flight House featuring hundreds of native butterflies, an art exhibit celebrates the 2019 EmilyAnn Artist of the Year—children…