Don't Mess With Texas

Don’t Mess With Texas

You’ve heard this slogan for the longest time and so have we.  We took it seriously.  We didn’t mess with Texas.  Drove across in a couple of days, Louisiana bound.  We crossed the boarder at Hobbs, New Mexico, where Texas is flat, hot, and dusty cotton country.  Miles and miles of cotton fields with ochre colored soil and a cotton gin or two in each small town.  

We stayed our first night at Abilene State Park, just south of the town of Abilene (calling it such is being a bit generous).  The park was lovely, nestled in a quite piece of the Texas hill country.  We camped in a great little spot with beautiful oak trees for shade and a quite little creek rolling by out back.  

By the time we hit Dallas, the geography looked like the Midwest, only 114 degrees hotter.  On a day when it was almost 90, with 50% humidity, we actually had one guy say with his quite, slurred together Texas drawl: “nice spring day tuday, you should see when it gets hot in the summir.”  Curious, I asked: “how hot does it get?”  He replied “hunnert, hunnert en ten.  Humidity up around sixty fiiiiveee PERcent.  Hot.”

The second night we stayed in beautifully landscaped private campground outside of Dallas, in a little town called Canton.  Only this one has no Hall of Fame.  The park was immaculate; you half expected to see a foursome of golfers playing through.  Not only could you camp there on their manicured grounds, but you could also buy yourself a little slice of Texas, a small cabin on one of the “lakes” in the park.  These are not lakes as you native Minnesotans might consider them.  Just large ponds, really.  But they will take a singlewide, fancy it up with a porch, some stone accents, and some nice landscaping and sell it to you for a song.  If anyone is looking to go in on a vacation ownership deal down there, just let us know.  We had a nice mellow campfire and shoved off the next day for the Bayou.

A note about Dairy Queens.  The have a gaggle of them in Texas.  Nearly every town has one, but it is not like your little walk up, only open in the summer, ice cream and hot dog kind of DQ, we are talking a full service Texas institution here.  Along with giant containers containing 100 gallons of sweet tea, these DQs have unique, Big Hat, entrees like the Belt Buster, the Double Belt Buster, and for you big ole wranglers, they will sling you out a Triple Belt Buster.  A triple cheeseburger soooo big, you could feed a small family on it.  Just make sure to loosen your belt buckle a bit.  Lastly, y’all should know you can get everything chicken fried.  Chicken fried chicken sandwiches, chicken fried steak strips, chicken fried ice cream (well maybe that’s a tall tale).  And EVERYTHING comes with a side of gravy.  Just try to save room for the ice cream.

Outside of that, we can’t tell you too much else about Texas, we didn’t mess with it.  Now we know that one can see the Alamo, Austin, San Antonio, and a bunch of cool stuff in between.  We just decided not to.  Oh, and sorry, no pictures.  If you want more, stop and down and see Texas yourself.  The people are very friendly.