Tag: Texas
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Southern Heat, Part 7 (Hill Country)
The extended road trip finally arrived at its western terminus in the Texas Hill Country. This also marked my first visit to Burnet County, a rural locale situated northwest of Austin. Locals pronounce it something like BURN-it, and that’s how it felt as the mercury hit 103° Fahrenheit (40° Celsius) each and every day. It…
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Southern Heat, Part 6 (Houston)
The heat really cranked up as we entered Texas, never dropping below a daily high of 100° Fahrenheit (38° Celsius). Here my hybrid working vacation transitioned completely to pure work for a day. That’s where I needed to attend meetings at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston (map). This happened to fall along our intended…
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Southern Heat, Part 1 (Road Trip)
It feels like I just got back from Costa Rica and then I’m right back on the road again. True enough, we made it home for only a couple of weeks before we began an extended drive through the southeastern United States. However, those were the only dates that worked with everyone’s schedules this summer.…
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Counties in Texas that I have Visited
There are 254 Counties in Texas – “The Lone Star State“ Also be sure to see my United States County Counting Page for the rest of the states. I have visited 69 Counties = 27.2% of Counties in Texas Counties visited are colored-in; counties still needing to be visited are blank. Map created using Mob…
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Wonder World Park
San Marcos, Hays County, Texas, USA (March 2007) Wonder World Park contained several attractions in one compact area, including a cave; an observation tower, an “anti-gravity” house, and a wild animal park. It also included a gift shop and a snack bar. Tickets could be purchased for the entire tour or for individual portions. Wonder…
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Big Bend National Park
Terlingua, Brewster Co., Texas, USA (May 1992) We left San Antonio, passed Uvalde, passed Del Rio, driving through ever smaller and less frequent towns, moving into one of the most remote locations imaginable. We were heading towards that place where the Rio Grande River flows southeast and then takes a sudden jog to the north.…
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Cross-Country, Part 6 (The Western Half)
The first half of the drive seemed almost routine as it ran through terrain familiar to a lifelong resident of the eastern part of the United States. However we still had a couple of days to go and we began moving into unfamiliar territory. Here I captured a wide swath of previously unvisited counties straight through the…
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Cross-Country, Part 5 (The Eastern Half)
We actually did a lot more than collect new counties and visit zoos. After all, we sat in a car for five days! I needed to stop every couple of hours to stretch my legs. Sometimes we timed our layovers to see something interesting and sometimes things had a way of finding us. The open…
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Cross-Country, Part 3 (County Counting)
I wanted to grab some new counties. That basic objective served as a guidepost, the unifying premise for the entire trip. We would see other things along the route and during most of a week in Phoenix, Arizona, of course. However, make no mistake, I wanted the new counties more than anything else. As noted…
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Cross-Country, Part 2 (Weatherford Art Thou?)
A strange alignment revealed itself as I planned my cross-country trip. I used the same basic set of assumptions for each of the four potential routes. First I divided the total driving duration by five to come up with approximately equal days on the road. That would average about seven hours of driving each day…