Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2020 i Texas Highways Magazine

I know winter has left the Hill Country when golden patches of flowers appear seemingly overnight in my Driftwood neighborhood, decorating yards and lining roadways, like nature’s highlighter heralding the arrival of spring. The flowers are so ubiquitous they’re called DYCs, or darn yellow composites, and last year’s crop was particularly robust. My commute was filled with a lot more cheer than normal as I took in the increasing bounty of brilliant color each morning. This month we’re celebrating spring’s arrival by exploring Texas’ natural beauty in its impressive variety. Along with our perennial wildflower coverage, we go on safari in pursuit of the state’s wildlife with stunning photographs by Contributing Editor E. Dan Klepper. In one of our cover features, Pulitzer Prizefinalist George Getschow examines his fraught relationship with…

Memory is the only pickup truck you can drive back to places that no longer exist. In the spring of 2019, a friend offered to let me spend the month of April at his ranch in a flat pocket of South Texas Brush Country between Cotulla, Laredo, and Eagle Pass known as the Golden Triangle (not to be confused with the Golden Triangle framing Beaumont, Orange, and Port Arthur). There, he explained, I would have the space and peace of mind required to finish the novel I’d spent the last seven years writing. I’d be on my own at a small cabin away from the ranch’s busy headquarters, tucked in the corner of an endless maze of mesquite, hard-soil trails, barbed-wire fences, and man-made ponds locals call “tanks.” It is…

A tasty kolache at Weikel’s Bakery. A porcelain flower vase at an antiques shop. Bluebonnets poking through the blackland soil after an early-spring rain. Oh, and a signed, size 23 Reebok basketball shoe once worn by NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal. Find all of these in Carmine (pronounced “Car-mean”), a town of about 250 that straddles the Fayette and Washington county lines along US 290. Patches of wild-flowers, vintage finds, and Czech pastries have long drawn visitors seeking to stretch their legs midway on the drive between Houston and Austin. But the Texas Basketball Museum, opened in 2009, also offers travelers good reason to linger, especially as the NCAA tournament, or March Madness, commences March 17. Bob Springer, former publisher of Texas Basketball magazine, founded the museum to trace…

San Antonio 1.5 hours Austin 2 hours Houston 4 hours Dallas 4.5 hours Spring crowds in search of the Hill Country’s famous wildflowers often stop just short of Kerrville, located 30 minutes southwest of the tourist hub of Fredericksburg. But travelers who continue southwest on State Highway 16 for another 30 minutes are rewarded with an off-the-beaten path respite along the peaceful banks of the Guadalupe River. Farmer Justin Graham, who operates the Kerrville Farmers Market, likens his little city to “a flower that hasn’t opened yet.” There is a lot to discover in this budding town, from its active arts community and picturesque walking trails to its flourishing dining scene. STAY EAT & DRINK SHOP EXPLORE Friday 4 P.M. To Market, to Market Kerrville is home to several comfy…

Look at her. So poised. So regal. Watching her gracefully slither through my yard hunting for her next meal this sultry summer evening, I make sure to say hello before chopping her head off with my hoe. That’s been my attitude toward the gorgeous, copper-toned serpents that surround my lakeside home in North Texas. But Chuck Swatske is trying to convince me to retire my hoe. Swatske, certified a master naturalist by Texas Parks and Wildlife, wants to educate me about the ecological benefits of copperheads and other Texas snakes. They devour mice and rats, helping to curb the disease-carrying rodents from running rampant in urbanized areas, he notes. Wild snakes are also an important food source for birds of prey like owls, hawks, herons, and roadrunners. Not to mention, toxins…

RECIPE Lavender Pecan Crisps Makes up to 36 cookies INGREDIENTS 2 cups sugar4 sticks softened butter3 cups flour2 teaspoons cream of tartar½ teaspoon salt1 teaspoon baking soda6 teaspoons ground lavender4 cups corn flakes1 cup chopped pecans, toasted DIRECTIONS Cream sugar and butter. Mix in dry ingredients, then fold in corn flakes and pecans. Spoon onto cookie sheet and bake at 350 F for 20 minutes. Visitors flock to Brenham, near Debbie and Jim McDowell’s farm, to take in the breathtaking sight of a sea of bluebonnets every March. Then they come back May through September to see the pale purple spires that are the namesake of the McDowells’ Chappell Hill Lavender Farm. Lavender is not native to Texas, and the local climate provides a challenge to those hoping to grow…

1 A harmless rat snake is often mistaken for a dangerous rattlesnake, especially when it feels threatened and starts beating its tail against some sticks to make you think it’s a rattler. Similarly, several species of harmless water snakes are frequently mistaken for venomous water moccasins. One of the ways to tell the difference is to watch their behavior. Water snakes like to hang together around marinas, boat docks, and populated lakes, swimming with their heads above the surface and their bodies below it. Water moccasins typically swim alone and often below the surface of the water, hunting for fish to eat. If you encounter one, it will likely try to scare you away by coiling up, thrashing its tail like a rattler, and displaying its fangs. If the inside of…

Every work day, weather permitting, beekeeper Roosevelt Roberson tends the hives at BeeWeaver Honey Farm. He’s worked at the operation, located just outside Navasota in the rural community of Lynn Grove, for more than 50 years. At 74 years old, though, he has no plans to retire. Roberson got into beekeeping soon after graduating from high school in 1964. He initially helped his father on the family farm near Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site. Two years later, he was looking to branch out on his own and approached Roy Stanley Weaver Sr. for a job tending his bees. “Do you think you can put your hand into a hive of bees?” Roy asked Roberson. “At 21 years old, us young men think we can do anything,” Roberson recalls. “I said, ‘By…

Theresa DiMenno DiMenno, whose work appears in “Natural Beauties” (Page 42), as well as this month’s Getaway about Kerrville, is a self-taught photographer and a storyteller at heart. Spring in Texas is her favorite shooting season. “Wildflower season in Texas is a glorious occasion,” she says. “Budding life is a symphony of rebirth, rejuvenation, openness, awareness, connection.” Look for her “Spring in Texas” notecard collection in the Texas Highways Mercantile this spring. Antonio Ruiz-Camacho In his essay “In the Valley of Mirrors” (Page 14), Antonio Ruiz-Camacho traveled to his friend’s remote ranch in South Texas. He dreaded run-ins with rattlers and scorpions. “I kept waiting for them to show up, but they never did,” he says. “They probably know one of my dreams is to own my own Texas ranch…

Jenny Morgan has lived all over Texas, from her college days at Angelo State University in San Angelo to stints in Austin, DFW, and Amarillo. In 2007, a desire to raise her family in a small town brought Morgan back to Shamrock, the town of her birth. Along Interstate 40, just 15 miles west of Oklahoma, Shamrock is known for its Route 66 heritage, the annual St. Patrick’s Day celebration, and—increasingly—for Morgan’s record store. In 2017, she opened Spinning Jenny’s House of Music, refurbishing a midcentury service station that had stood vacant for at least 20 years. The vinyl shop is just a block away from the U-Drop Inn, an art deco Route 66 landmark that now houses the town’s visitor center. Morgan says tourists come through her shop every…

Wild At Heart We want our wildflowers the way we want a lot of things: to be made in Texas. That requires native seeds, which can be hard to find because they occur in areas without human intervention and are not widely sold at nurseries. But the push for native seeds has taken root as Texans are searching for drought-resistant landscaping. Bill Neiman of Native American Seed, a cultivator of seeds for wildflowers and grasses, is the guru of this scene. Neiman use to own a nursery in Flower Mound, but the heat wave of 1980 crippled his nonnatives. This led him to an epiphany: Natives, which were blooming in the countryside near his nursery at that time, were the future. In 1989, Neiman and his wife, Jan Neiman, founded…

The 15-story Hotel Settles, opened in 1930 during the milk and honey days of Big Spring’s oil industry, towers over this small West Texas town, population 28,000. For decades, the Settles was the only full-service hotel between Dallas and El Paso. Guests included Elvis Presley and Gregory Peck. But the hotel shuttered in May 1980 after the oil crash and the closing of the nearby Webb Air Force Base. The building’s demise seemed to bring the whole town down. “A lot of people said it would not be savable,” says Tammy Schrecengost, director of The Heritage Museum of Big Spring. “So many campaigned for it to be torn down because it had become an eyesore. It attracted the transients passing through on the train, and there were juveniles tearing it…

Among the live oaks, scrub brush, and rocky hillsides of Dripping Springs sits an unexpected architectural gem. At Tillie’s, turquoise doors open to a colorful chapel-like space framed by soaring ironwood rafters that were originally part of a 19th-century town hall from the Ninh Binh region of Vietnam. The intricately carved wood accents a wall of backlit saint statues and a dramatic chandelier. The visual impact is immediate when paired with the brightly tiled floor and luxe leather seats. The romantic and ethereal space alone is worth a visit to the restaurant, which is part of Camp Lucy, a resort and wedding venue. But the menu—upscale Texas Hill Country with unexpected global twists—implores passersby to stick around for a meal. The once-sleepy town of Dripping Springs, the Napa to Austin’s…

Just east of San Antonio sits one of Texas’ oldest towns, named after one of the state’s original heroes. Juan Seguín was a Tejano leader in the Texas Revolution who fought in the Battle of San Jacinto. Today, Seguin celebrates both its Lone Star heritage and its setting along the Guadalupe River, making for a “nutty” day trip. World’s Largest Pecans It’s a feat to have the “world’s largest” anything, but Seguin proudly claims three of the world’s largest pecans. The story begins in 1962 when a group of locals wanted to honor the town’s pecan industry. They built a 5-foot-long concrete pecan that still sits in front of the Guadalupe County courthouse. Forty years later, local pecan farmer John Pape built an 11-foot pecan, only to find out that…