Texas – we’re standing in it.

We arrived in Round Rock – just north of the Texas capital, Austin – yesterday afternoon and have been welcomed into the very comfortable home of Bill and Patty. To our delight, Bill has an encyclopedic knowledge of government, history, geography and Texas folklore that he is ever ready to share with us. On his library shelves are 140 books he has either written or co-authored including a special section of children's books. Bill is helpfully filling in the crater-like holes of our understanding about Texas. Everyone’s heard of Texas – and Texans love their larger than life portrayal and a certain mystique that is attributed to them and their state. What we didn’t know until we toured the historic Washington-on-the-Brazos museum was that Texas was once an independent nation. Sam Houston and a small band of Texas army fighters defeated the larger Mexican General Santa Anna’s army at San Jacinta. This came after Santa Anna had successfully pursued a devastating routing of the Alamo and Goliad in an attempt to put down the revolt by local Texas citizenry as they sought independence from Mexico. (Yes, at one stage all Texans were Mexican citizens). Knowing this helps us appreciate why Texans generally put their state first before their national identity. They fought and died for it. In fact, as Texas joined the Union (as the 28th state) they received agreeable terms in recognition that their “state” was an independent nation joining with the United States, the only US state to do so. In trying to explain some of the qualities of being a Texan, we read that “strength and individuality are admired”. Weakness is not. Texans welcome people who want to be Texan and, it seems, true Texans can’t understand why anyone would not want to be a Texan. One example of uniquely Texas-centric perspective comes from State Parks promotional material that can be found online (a very good site). It reads, in part:

“…The Rio Grande Valley is an ecosystem found nowhere else in the United States. It is a subtropical environment, which lies further south than any other part of the United States except Hawaii and part of Florida”.

Riddle me this. If “Hawaii and part of Florida” are further south, then isn’t it wrong to claim that the Rio Grande valley is “further south than any other part of the Unites States”? Apparently not in Texas. In continuing our cultural culinary experiences, we took the Blue Bell Ice Creamery tour and sampled their delicious ice cream. We also ate a chicken-fried steak and T-bone steak the other night. It is impossible to think what a large T-bone would look like since the small one we ordered covered the dinner plate! Again, the Texas mystique. Denise claims that our readers are not interested in the price of diesel – though we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get the best deals. Absent a photo to prove it, we did a $1.86/gallon fill-up yesterday. A new record low! And in the past few weeks we’ve noticed occasionally that diesel is sometimes cheaper than the most expensive gasoline. As visitors we can’t help but chuckle when little towns we’ve passed proudly proclaim themselves as “XYZ Capital of the World”, where “XYZ” may be something quite obscure. Certainly in the vastness of Texas they have a lot to offer across a very diverse geography that includes beaches, mountains, rivers, open plains, deserts, hill country, and piney forests. And within all these regions are various legends and historic sites to add color and character to the land. We're looking forward to our nearly month-long exploration of Texas.