Perhaps, just perhaps, you’ve heard it said that “everything is big in Texas.” And probably you don’t doubt it. I didn’t.
Nonetheless, seeing it with my own eyes is completely astounding. The stretches of deserts, the endless monotony of road-kill-spotted two-land roads, and the infinity of strip malls defies plausibility. Can there really be enough people to shop in all these malls? To sleep in all these hotels? To eat at all these restaurants? The sheer number of Red Lobsters, Olive Gardens, TGI Fridays, etc . (not to mention the McDonalds) alongside the 80 miles between San Antonio and Austin is simply absurd. And the patriotism, too, fits the stereotype. Every American flag (and they’re everywhere) waves alongside the Lone Star banner. The Little Control signs on the highway read “Don’t Mess with Texas.” This place, for better or worse, has a culture of its own – one of pride, of excess, of down-home barbecue and 4-wheel-drive cars.
I write this from Houston, a few blocks from Bush Senior’s home, near Rice University and a hospital center that could be a city unto its own. We’ve been here for 2 days after stopping briefly in Austin and spending a night in San Antonio. After a 12.5 hour drive from Lamar, CO (during which the only “point of interest” was watching a bird get decapitated by the car in front of us), we arrived in San Antonio. We were tired and our legs were cramped. We stretched then with a walk along the River Walk, a winding path that runs along the river in downtown San Antonio. The stroll is beautiful. The sidewalk reaches right up to the narrow stream where boats ride back and forth and waterfalls are built here and there into the sidewalk. Lush trees hang overhead and the restaurant and pub options are abundant. We stopped for some margaritas and laughed at the intoxicated people who stumbled around us in high heels. We arrived back in to our corner hotel room around 1:30AM after a late-night snack of pizza.