Road Trip IV, Days 11-13, Scottsdale, AZ to Dallas

Here’s a little secret that I seem to need to re-learn every year: the maps in our US atlas are NOT to scale.

Duh.

Still, when Washington occupies the same amount of paper as Vermont, you’d think I’d get a clue.

Texas, though? Texas gets SEVEN PAGES–and that does NOT include the extra pages showing only cities.

And I STILL forget, every year, how freakin’ huge it is. Still, the more there is, the more there is to love, right?

Hmmm, gotta be careful here. I know Wing’s World could be read by several Texans, including Social Media Maven WANAmama Kristen Lamb, who lives here. So I don’t want to incur any Texan wrath with what I’m about to say, but…

It occurs to me that scenery in Texas is analogous to flavor quotient in a strawberry. My theory? There’s only so much flavor a given strawberry can have. The bigger the berry, the blander the taste.

In the case of Texas, all the flavor seems to be located in small, specific bites of berry. Or, to put it another way, I think someone must have picked up Texas and shaken it, so that all the scenery rolled into a couple of corners.

Big Bend National Park, down in the southwest, got the most. That place is STUNNING. The south-central hill country, with its limestone ledges and graceful oaks, is pretty. (As I write this, The Mate and I are tooling along I-20 near Pecos, and I would give my kingdom for a graceful oak. Or even an ugly one. Trees….gasp! I need…trees…)

The bayous near Houston are cool, and–though I haven’t been there yet–I hear the Padre Island National Seashore is well worth a visit. It’s part of Texas, all right. But it’s also 600 miles away from here.

I know, I know, I know. Every state has its boring parts. It’s just that here, they’re–well, Texas-sized.

So now it’s your turn. What beauteous corner of Texas have I missed? What other hidden gems of supposedly “boring” states should I go visit?n