Howdy Texas! What an absolutely amazing start to the USA ya’ll have been. When we crossed the border a month ago, we knew Texas overlanding would be a huge change from Mexico, but this Lone Star State has delivered waaay beyond our expectations. We saw cool scenery, wildlife, cities, space rockets, history, politics, long-horns, money-printing and a rock-star. We won an award and we saw (a lot of) stuff fried. But by far the best thing has been the people – Texans are just the best!  

Big Bend to Alamo

After an early-morning crossing into USA (no dramas btw, great border guys) our immediate priority was an all-American diner breakfast… yup, a fry-up, plus pancakes, syrup, good coffee… the full-monty. You’ve gotta start off in USA on the right foot! Then we scooted west to Big Bend Country. Boy, we got caught in some storms there! Seriously biiig electric storms which flooded and closed some of the trails. Nevertheless, both the Big Bend State and National Parks are well worth a visit. We saw lots of wildlife, even an elusive bear 😮!! Bears aren’t very big in these parts, but it did get me thinking (again!!) about the much larger grizzlies that are to come further north.  

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After a great tour of the space observatory in Fort Davis we went east to the Hill Country where we popped in to see President LBJ’s ranch. Then it was on to San Antonio to see the (slightly) more distant history of The Alamo. Texas has a different back-story to other states, having once been part of Mexico and then an independent republic, before becoming part of The Union. The sites of battles and momentous events are there to see all over Texas, but The Alamo is the most famous, sitting slap-bang in the centre of the very cool, down-town San Antonio.

Billy’s and Elon’s Schedule

We’ve mentioned before in our blog (probably with tedious frequency) how we hate to travel to a deadline. Wandering aimlessly is our ‘thing’, but in Texas we make an exception for two people:  Billy Joel and Elon Musk. A curious pairing, eh? Billy dominates our calendar with the fixed date of us having tickets to see him in Dallas/Fort Worth on 12^th October. I’m just a lot excited.

Elon’s hold over us is a little more flexible. His SpaceX Starship rocket is due for test launch in Boca Chica, near Brownsville sometime mid-end October and we would be more than super-chuffed to see this galactic event. Problem is… mankind’s route to the next phase of space exploration is neither smooth nor predictable. ‘Hurry-up and wait’ is the name of the game here. We can hang around for a bit, but we’re on a bureaucratically limited time-leash in USA. The frequently reliable ‘Boca Chica Twitterati’ predict that some major rocket assembly could be happening sometime in the next 24-48 hrs. So rather than hang around waiting for a launch that could potentially be weeks away, we make an impromptu decision (like… right now) to blast five hours down Route 77 to see if we can see anything of the assembly.

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The thing with Elon’s Starship, well… one of the things, that makes it so different from NASA’s projects, is that it is quite public. No secret build-out facility to keep the rocket away from prying eyes. No Sir! Elon saves money by constructing his thing in the open air, literally right at the side of a public highway, behind a thin wire fence. The timing of our arrival in Boca Chica could not have been more perfectly jammy if we’d had intervention from Mr Musk himself. Just as we pulled up to the fence outside the SpaceX compound, we saw a handful of the Boca Chica Twitterati who had gathered in anticipation. An enormous crane started lifting the top half of the Starship onto the bottom half. It took a while, but it looked absolutely gob-smacking. A stunning, gleaming stainless-steel 1960s-comic-book-style spaceship, being assembled for space flight right in front of us. 

As we push ‘send’ on this blog some three weeks later, it turns out to be a good thing that we didn’t hang around in the hope of seeing a launch. The date has still to be set. But if the programme all comes off for Elon – and his odds are looking pretty good – the rocket we saw being built will make space-travel history when it launches. Elon has a truly extraordinary vision (well, that and an extraordinary bank balance too), and we’re chuffed to have seen a tiny part of the future of space travel come together.  

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After Boca Chica we continued the space theme and headed up to the Johnson Space Centre in Houston (that’s Houston as in the famous: “Houston, we have problem” – Tom Hanks, 1995 😉). It’s a fine and fascinating facility with yet more insight into the space world, but man is it hot and humid down there at the coast!!! Seriously hot and sticky. We guess it’s a seasonal thing, but we can’t wait to get more inland to cooler temperatures and drier air back in central Texas.

Austin

In lovely Austin we get a bit of relief from the humidity and some kind Texan hospitality. Amy and Nick had seen Cuthbert parked-up back in Fort Davis, noted our web address and contacted us to invite us to park-up with them when we get to Austin. How amazing is that??!!! And their kids absolutely blew us away with their surprise gifts to us… a Lego Cuthbert designed and built by James, and a fabulous Cuthbert globe-logo designed and drawn by Evelyn. Such a lovely family.

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And even if you’re not as fortunate as us to receive an offer of generous hospitality, we’d still advise a visit to the city which revels in the mantra ‘Keep Austin Weird’. We had great food, great music (yes… the Broken Spoke country music classic), saw the largest urban bat colony in the Americas, and learned a lot about Texas history at the city’s great museums. Austin is just on the right side of ‘weird’ 😊

Texas Overlanding Meet

A few weeks ago, some Facebook post or other alerted us to the imminent Texas Overlanding Show near Llano. Being overlanders ourselves ‘n all that, we thought we’d go along to meet others of the same ilk. The Texas show doesn’t compete with the likes of Expo East or West, but it’s a fun weekend and we met some great people. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we won the award for furthest travelled attendees at the show!  The lovely people from Quick Pitch South Africa won the furthest travelled vendor. As everyone drifted away from the show, our scheduled time in Texas was nearing the end… remember that date we mentioned, with Billy Joel??

Dallas/Fort Worth – Food for Thought

Dallas and Fort Worth are neighbouring cities with lots going on between them. In the 70s at school, we learned of JFK’s fate in Dallas, of the shots from the sixth-floor window, of the ‘grassy knoll’, of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Now we were there, at the very spot. It often feels strange to stand in spots of momentous history and for us it’s one of the joys of travel. Some years after the JFK thing, Dallas gained notoriety with our generation for the TV show, so we checked-out Southfork Ranch too. It’s as cheesy as a cheesy thing on a cheesy day… but it had to be done 😊.

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Much more exciting in downtown Dallas, we just happened to be there for the State Fair of Texas. You don’t get more ‘Texas’ than that! Here we get a feel for what Texas all about, y’all!  We saw lots of fascinating/hilarious events… pig racing, cow milking, chain-saw carving, stunt dogs, puppeteering, music bands, all great fun. But the greatest eye-opener for us was the food. My, Oh, My. These Texans love a ‘fried’. Fried what? Well… anything. Just anything… as long as it’s fried. 

Here’s a little taster of just a few of the delicacies on offer at the fair: fried bread pudding, fried sweet-potato pie, fried oreos, deep-fried latte (nope… no idea), fried mash potatoes, fried banana pudding, fried snickers, fried peach cobbler, fried guacamole bites, fried cookie dough, fried chicken skin, fried chilli burritos and finally… chef’s gourmet masterpiece… the deep-fried bacon-wrapped hot dog!!  Oh… and there’s fried apple pie too. But if you’ve no time to have your (fried) pie and eat it, a pie can be blitzed-up with cream and ice-cream to make a drinkable ‘fried-pie shake’ to go. Why not try the whole lot? Your arteries will thank you for it!   

Over in neighbouring Fort Worth, we went to the US Government facility where ‘green-backs’ are printed. It’s a tour on a raised walkway above the actual printworks for the US dollar currency notes. Very interesting, but no photos allowed – wonder why??? 😉

Also in Fort Worth, we had another taste of fabulous Texan hospitality at the generous invitation of Gary and Julia. By sheer coincidence, it turned out that they also had tickets to see Billy Joel. So not only were they kind enough to take us on a sight-seeing tour of Fort Worth and the amazing long-horn cattle of the Stockyards, but we went with them to the concert too. A wonderful weekend. And the legendary Mr Joel? Oh, he was fabulous too 😊.  

We’re a bit sad as we leave Texas, it has been a brilliant revelation. Watch this space for news from our State No.2: Louisiana!

More Texas Photos…

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