Across Texas

Leaving New Mexico on Monday, we headed into Texas, but not before swinging briefly up to Kansas and Oklahoma for state sign pictures there. In my opinion, Texas is one of the biggest "can't see it all" casualties on the trip: we drove through the northern part of the state, stopping for only two nights. The size of Texas is a challenge because of the time and money involved to cross the state, not to mention we had no connections south or west of Dallas. So, though it's a shame to me, we bypassed much of the state. I'll have to visit in the future.

Our first night, we stopped in a small hotel in Childress, TX. The experience in this small town was exactly what I envisioned of Texas: a lot of cowboy hats and boots, very big trucks, and thick accents. I enjoyed people-watching during dinner at a small restaurant. My experience from traveling the states is that Texas and California are two states that have really developed a culture of their own with interesting differences from anywhere else, and I really like observing these differences.

After two long days on the road split by our night in Childress, we arrived to Dallas to meet Matt, an MV alumnus who played in the tuba section with me for 3 years and moved to Texas to work at Texas Instruments. What I noticed on the drive into Dallas was the sprawl: the land is so flat and abundant near Dallas that things just kept moving outwards. A current map of Dallas shows the numerous encircling beltways and huge metropolitan area that has developed.

Downtown Dallas on the drive in

On Tuesday night, we walked around the uptown Dallas area near where he lived. Like most cities, the trendy and hip uptown area was full of younger professionals, wealth, garden-style condos, and restaurants that all looked worthy of a visit. We ate at Urban Taco, an incredibly delicious modern take on Mexican food. Afterwards, we walked around and headed up the parking deck Matt's apartment. While his apartment had no view at all, the top of the parking deck was 6 stories up and overlooked the entire nighttime skyline of Dallas.

The next morning, we drove out of Dallas for a long-haul day across the South to Auburn University to meet up again with my good friend David. As we left Dallas, we drove through the High Five - one of the country's tallest, biggest, and most complex highway interchanges. It is so named because there are five planes of ramps and highways stacked on top of one another. I thought this was neat, though most people wouldn't think twice about it.

A bad picture of driving through the High Five

The long drive after flying through the High Five would leave us at Auburn and with only two days left before our exciting return to Virginia!