Category Archives: Wing’s Words

Are Subarus a Political Indicator? Observations from the Interstates

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Road Trip IV, Days 41-43: Des Moines, Iowa to Provo, Utah

Since Wing’s World continues to be hijacked by a travel blogger for the duration of her road trip, I figure it’s time to focus some attention on…the road. Or more specifically, the vehicles and landscapes we’ve been looking at for the past couple thousand miles. For The Mate and me, the two coasts are all about visiting family, friends, and national parks, but in the middle of the country (with the exception of one newly-discovered cousin) it’s just us and the road.

And no Subarus. Our little Red Rover is feeling kinda alienated. Where’d all the Subarus go?

I’ll tell you where: Subaru Nation. A.k.a. Northern California to western Washington; New England; and the university-dominated sections of the Southeast, including my home state, North Carolina.

Outside of Subaru Nation, it’s all about trucks and SUVs. (Except in LA, where sports cars compete with Prius for Highest Degree of Cool.)

I’m telling you: I’ve driven across the country four years in a row, and I see a political pattern. Blue States? Subarus. Red states? No Subarus. (With the exception, again, of SoCal, and the Tarheel State, which seems to be backing away from its 2008 blueness at the speed of light.)

I don’t know if Democrats are more likely to buy Subarus, or if owning a Subaru exerts a subconscious pressure to buy Obama stickers. (It’s POSSIBLE, I suppose, that the issue is more complicated than this.) But if there are any Republican Subaru owners out there, I’d like to meet ’em.

imageSome other road observations:

Iowa gets a bad rap. Iowa is NOT flat. It’s beautifully rolling. Kansas, on the other hand? Pancake City. There’s a reason we’re taking I-80 instead of I-70.

Washington, my adopted, till-death-do-us-part state, has the best rest areas in the country.

It’s true. New England states, West Virginia and maybe a couple others in the northeast, have these “travel plazas” where you can pee, then refuel with Starbucks, McDonalds, or Dunkin Donuts. Most other states just have bathrooms, maybe a picnic area. (Half of Texas’s rest areas seemed closed, but then, everything in Texas is bigger, so maybe bladders are too.)

But Washington’s rest areas, at least on I-5? They have sweet little church ladies serving you coffee and cookies. For free. Well, you’re supposed to leave a donation, and everybody does, so those church ladies (or Elks, or Rotarians) probably earn a tidy little sum, which is why they do it, of course. But it doesn’t feel like that. When I wander over for a cup of tea, I feel like someone’s grandma has come out to the freeway to make sure I’m comfy. Thanks, Grandma! I miss you. I sure wish more states allowed you out on the road.

imageSo, am I right about Subarus, or am I crazy? Or am I missing some rest area gems from a non-Washington state? Or have I offended any Kansans? Let me hear your own Interstate Observations.

Quest Teaching: Know an Independent-Minded Teacher?

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Road Trip IV, Days 38-40: Durham, NC to Indianapolis

First, a word about the weather: WEIRD.

Depending on where you live, this word means different things to you, but you can relate nonetheless. Since I’ve been driving around the country for the last 5 1/2 weeks, I’ve seen all types of weird. California drought suddenly doused by mega-rainstorms. North Carolina suffering wave after wave of ice storm. (Can you say “firewood”?) And now here we are zipping through America’s heartland under sunny skies while states at lower latitudes to our east and south are running out for more de-icer. How can any American doubt climate change? We’re like the poster child!

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And now, a completely different topic: lesson plans.

I’m a writer, but I’m also a teacher, remember? True, I’ve been out of the classroom for nearly four years, but teaching is a permanent condition, like having stubby toes. I can’t NOT look for learning opportunities in, for example, road signs. (Ohio’s US highway 35 is the Welsh Way? Why? Did the Welsh come here to mine coal?) I can’t NOT listen to The Mate’s ESPN College Sports Radio without vowing to find out why no one’s giving out NIT scores. (Is ESPN under contract to discuss the NCAA only?) And I can’t NOT correct commentators’ grammar when they say things like “can’t not.”

So you can imagine how my pulse quickened when I heard about Quest Teaching. This is a site started by tween author Sharon Skretting to provide teachers with lesson plans based on brand-new fiction–lesson plans written by the authors themselves!

Author? Teacher? Hey, they’re playing my song!

At first I was doubtful when Sharon invited me to write a lesson plan using my middle grades novel, The Flying Burgowski. It’s fantasy, after all–not wizards-or-vampires fantasy, but still: it’s about a girl who can fly! Sure, it’s a great read, but…a lesson? About what?

Then I thought about it. My heroine, 14 year-old Jocelyn Burgowski, may have a superpower, but she lives very much in the real world. And her real world includes a mom who is a mess. Joss’s mom functions with apparent normality until stress catches up to her and she devolves back into dependency on alcohol and prescription drugs.

Dark topic for middle grades readers? Yeah. Also nothing terribly out of the norm from what I observed in my 20 years of teaching. And I think kids deserve to see their real world reflected, and successfully negotiated, in books written for them.

So I took Sharon’s offer. I chose Chapter 12 of The Flying Burgowski, a chapter in which Mom melts down and Joss and her brother have to figure out what to do, and I wrote a lesson plan about finding positive strategies to deal with negative behaviors.

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I hope a teacher somewhere finds this lesson and uses it. (If you’re that teacher: the book is free, with copying privileges.) If not my lesson, I hope a teacher goes to Quest and tries one of the many and varied lessons there.

For example: Michelle Isenhoff’s lesson about using primary sources with her Civil War-era novel,The Candle Star. Or Lars Hedbor’s lesson using his Revolutionary War novels. Or Sharon’s own Jewel of Peru. Makes me want to teach again! Or be a student.

I know that many (most?) teachers have little wiggle room when it comes to choosing their own materials. I know that there is no shortage of safely tested literature out there, used year after year to good effect. But I also know how many students are budding writers themselves and how thrilled I would have been, as a student, to know I was reading a chapter by a writer I could email with questions. A writer who was interested in MY learning. A writer who might encourage ME.

That’s why I’m psyched to be part of Quest Teaching, and that’s why I have no problem asking you to send this link to any middle grades teacher, student, administrator or librarian you know. Let’s see where this takes us, shall we? Life is, after all, a Quest.

Also, if you know any other middle grades authors who might be interested in participating, please put them in touch with me!

Leaving NC, Where Barbecue’s a Noun and Fish Are Flowers

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Road Trip IV, Days 35-37:  Still in Durham, my hometown.

We were supposed to be on the road again today, headed back west. But Ma Nature had other plans (sound familiar?). So we’re hanging out an extra day with my folks. Car-camping in West Virginia is one thing; doing it in frozen rain is another. The Mate and I are outdoorsy, but we’re not IDIOTS.

So this extra time in the Tarheel State gives me the chance to talk about two phenomena we contemplate annually: barbecue and trout lilies.

First, ‘cue. Here’s what you need to know.

In the Upper Midwest and West, barbecue is a verb. “Gonna barbecue that salmon dad caught, wanna come over?” “Ooh, have you tried marinating the ribs in vodka before you barbecue ’em?”  Basically, it’s a synonym for “grilling.”

In Texas and most of the South, barbecue is an adjective: barbecued ribs. Barbecued chicken. Sometimes the “d” is left off, as in “barbecue potato chips,” but everyone understands, you’re pretty much referring to a sticky, spicy, tomato-based sauce, or at least that flavor.

In North Carolina, BARBECUE IS A NOUN.

Take a pig. Kill it. Dress it. Put the whole animal in an iron cooker with hickory chips for a couple-few days. Towards the end, when the meat is falling off the bone, chop it up with a secret mixture of vinegar, red pepper, and heaven. Let that cook awhile longer. Serve it up with sweet tea, fried okra, hush puppies and slaw. That’s  barbecue.

 

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(In the eastern part of the state, and in South Carolina, they put mustard in the sauce, but I refuse to address such a travesty.)

The best barbecue in the state–and yes, I will fight you over this–is Allen and Son’s, which just happens to be four miles from my folks’ house. In the old days, when The Mate used to fly back to NC to watch the ACC Tournament, he’d stop at Allen and Son’s first. When my folks fly out to visit us in Washington, they bring quarts of ‘cue, hard-frozen, in their luggage. That stuff is GOLD.

You can’t, or shouldn’t, eat it very often. Luckily, you don’t need to. And since we only come back here once a year, we feel free to pig out–pun intended–on ‘cue till we can’t stand up. (Then there’s Mama Dip’s fried chicken, but I’ll save that for next year’s posts.)

The antidote to all that grease (and, this year, to our Heels going out in the first game of the tournament) is the Wildflower Walk.

The Mate started this tradition way back when. The ACC Tourney finals air at 1 pm. That gives you hours and hours to while away and try to make room for more BBQ. So he got his basketball-watching friends, plus several of their non-basketball-watching spouses, to meet out on some land we owned and take a walk through the woods to look for trout lilies.

When you think “lily,” you picture something showy, right? Tiger lilies, or Easter? Trout lilies are their shy, modest, sweet little country cousins. They grown in the dead leaves of hardwood forests. Their leaves are speckled like trout, their pretty, mild-yellow faces hang down. They are among the first flowers of spring, and they are HARD to spot. Until you find one, and then, of course, they’re everywhere.

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So, yes: these same crazy Tarheel fans who’ve been watching game after game and screaming at the tv for three days are now squealing with delight over…a flower. It’s a beautiful thing. They wander. They marvel. They breathe the quiet forest air.

 

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And then, of course, it’s back to basketball and BBQ. The noun.

We’re heading west tomorrow, rain or shine. But in my mind, and stomach, I’ll still be gone, for a few more days, to Carolina.

Tell me: what is BBQ to you? Verb, adjective, noun? And do you have any traditions like our Wildflower Walk?

How ‘Bout Them Heels? Oh, How Can I Possibly Explain?

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 Road Trip IV, Days 32-34: Chapel Hill, NC

Let the ceremony games begin. The object of our pilgrimage trip. The ACC Tournament, ok?

For those of you not from North Carolina and/or not tainted familiar with the mores of college sports, a quick primer. Teams are organized into leagues, or conferences. Throughout the regular season, each college plays games against other member of its conference. For the University of North Carolina (aka The Tarheels, or Heels–please don’t ask me to explain that), that means Dook Duke, NC State, Virginia, and eleven others. At the end of the regular season, these 15 teams play each other in a loser-out tournament which begins on Wednesday and culminates in the championship on Sunday.

Other conferences around the country–the PAC 12, the Big 10– are doing the same thing, of course. On Sunday, the winners of all these tournaments are selected, along with the best teams around the country that did not win their tournaments, and put into the 68 brackets that you have probably heard about, the famous Big Dance of March Madness, the NCAA Tournament.

Got that? Good. It has almost nothing to do with what I’m writing about today. I am writing about religion.

That’s the only way I can explain what happens here in Chapel Hill at our friends Rich and Becky’s house, from Wednesday to Sunday. It starts small, maybe five or six of us watching the games no one really cares about. But by Friday, when Carolina plays, the living room will scarcely hold us. And all these highly educated people–law professors, a former college president, a dean, a member of Obama’s HHS staff, a state legislator–will be screaming at refs, raising our arms during free throws, and doing push-ups during time-outs when the game gets close.

(That last innovation was started by The Mate. He swears it works. All I know is, it’s a great tension reliever.)

One year one of the group, who was representing a guy on Death Row, actually stepped into the next room to negotiate a pardon with NC’s governor while the rest of the gang kept cheering. Then he re-joined the faithful. No one thought this was weird.

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There is no explaining faith. There is no explaining how all these thoughtful, rational, sensitive people can truly believe that Dook Duke’s Coach K is the Devil. (I mean the real Satan, not just a Blue Devil.) Or that God hates us if our free throws don’t go in. Or that a pimply-faced 19 year-old with a ball holds the keys to our present and future happiness.

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I should know. I grew up here, and at school I used to scoff at my fellow students who would stay home during Tournament Friday, or use “How ’bout them Heels?” as a greeting. Then I went off to college, and came home for spring break.

It was the end of March, 1982. Carolina, under Coach Dean Smith, had made it to the Final Four in New Orleans. My then-boyfriend (now my Mate) was beside himself. (The previous month he’d sent me a Carolina Blue valentine: “I love you almost as much as the Tarheels.” So I knew what I was getting into.)

The Heels won their Saturday game. Now they were in the Finals, facing Georgetown. Michael Jordan was a freshman. The Hoyas had their own super-frosh, man-child Patrick Ewing. The battle was joined. It was epic. The game came down to the final seconds.

You know what? I can’t possibly do the story justice. Too much has been written about The Shot Michael took to put Carolina up with 12 seconds on the clock; about Freddy Brown’s fateful pass to a member of the opposite team, giving the ball back to Carolina. About James Worthy’s anticlimactic missed free throws at the very end, when Carolina’s victory was sealed, and we were all rolling around on the carpet and screaming.

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It was a conversion of the deepest order. At the end of my break, I traveled back to college a confirmed, lifelong Tarheel Fan.

I’m not quite as bad as The Mate, OK? He’s traveled back from Washington State to Chapel Hill every March since 1990. When we took a sabbatical in New Zealand, he traveled back from there. He sincerely wishes bad things to happen to Coach K, or at least to his car.

Me, I just cheer.  And eat a ton of BBQ. And fried chicken. But that’s a whole other story.

Sports fans or baffled onlookers, let me hear from you. What’s your sports story? Are you the reason “fan” really means “fanatic”? Or do you think we’re all completely bonkers?

Can You Really Not Go Home Again?

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Road Trip IV, Days 29-31: Hangin’ Out in Durham, NC

I’m home. And I’m one of the very few 52 year-old Americans who can say that.

Both my parents still live on the funky little farm where I was born in 1961. My mom is in town right now tutoring her adult literacy student. My dad, semi-retired from Duke but still actively pursuing research in animal behavior, is at his lab checking on his lemurs. (He rides his part-electric tricycle the six miles each way.)

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The dogs in the yard are just as noisy as the ones we had when I was growing up: Norwegian Elkhounds (plus a poodle). The horses are a little less motley and scruffy than the ones I grew up riding, as my mom developed a taste for dressage, but the barnyard critters are just as colorful: chickens, a goat, and Stevie, the World’s Cutest Ass Donkey. (Their llama died a couple years ago, as did Bess, the Wandering Sheep.)

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The house is even more crammed with my grandmother’s artwork (she was a sculptor), my mom’s weavings, and items picked up from a lifetime of travel to places like Madagascar, Israel and Guatemala, plus art and furniture made by various local artisan friends. Oh, and then there’s my dad’s proclivity for new gadgets, clashing horribly with the aforementioned art and requiring fancy wandering patterns to walk anywhere in the house. And the wall of family photos, stuck up higgledy-piggledy with pushpins, edges curling, hopelessly overlapping each other because new ones keep getting added without the old ones ever being organized.

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None of the doors close properly. (Drives my carpenter husband nuts.) The ancient radiators still clank at night. The fridge is full of yogurt and peanut butter, local beer and imported cheese.

 

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Carolina Friends School, which I attended K-12 (and walked to, since my parents donated some of their adjacent land for it) is still going strong. I can hear the kids right now, across the pond, out for recess. Their stray soccer balls still float by our dam.

Like I said: home.

How rare is it, at my age, to have parents still married to each other, still living in the same house where they’ve lived for the past 54 years?  

I try to make myself focus on what’s different. There’s a sporty new Subaru BRZ in the driveway, which my dad bought for my mom but she’s too embarrassed to drive. There’s a new road into the woods where Carolina Friends School is expanding; one day they will inherit the entire property from my folks. And if course there’s that poodle.

But that’s really it. Home is breathtakingly, chaotically, wonderfully the same: full of dog hair, musical instruments, books, and muddy boots.

 

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So, Thomas Wolfe, fellow North Carolinian, I’m afraid I must beg to differ. It may not happen often, but…it happens. I’m home.

What do you guys think? Is my case not as rare as it feels? I would love to hear if you or anyone you know can relate to this question: Can you really not go home again?

DIY Travel: Why I Love Lonely Planet

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Road Trip IV, Days 26-28: Puerto Rico to Durham, NC

Sometimes you just have to get away. And sometimes you just have to get away from other people who are getting away.

That’s why I am a loyal Lonely Planet-head. For those of you who don’t know, Lonely Planet is a series of travel books (originally) published in the U.K. I haven’t yet been to the country they don’t cover, but I’m sure there is one…at least for now.

Besides offering essential amenities like detailed maps and lengthy snippets (snips?) of history and culture, LP guides feel like they were written for me…that is, for people who prefer

–restaurants where locals eat
–knowing how to get around as cheaply and independently as possible
–accommodations with a certain amount of quirk
–knowing when to eschew, and when to spring for, the services of guides
–staying away from crowds
–finding undiscovered gems to brag about later
–exercise
–understanding how local people feel about us tourists

Being thorough, LP books do describe the 500-pound gorillas of travel, the big resorts and postcard tours. But they do so with a certain amount of tongue in cheek. Here’s what they have to say about the biggest resort in Puerto Rico: “If your idea of a good vacation revolves around golf, tennis, spa pampering, water sports, fine dining and gambling–with lots of company–this could be your bag.”

(In other words, “If you want to go there, bless you…but we really doubt you want to go there if you’re the kind of person who buys our books.”)

LP’s stock in trade are the personal touches within each section that The Mate and I have learned to rely on. The Ceiba Country Inn is described as having “friendly owners and even friendlier pets.” Bingo! Our kinda place. Our room was cheaper than the one we stayed in off the interstate in Van Horn, Texas last month, and believe me, that one did not feature fresh papaya for breakfast.

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When LP tells us something is a must-do, we believe them. MUST eat at the food kiosks (friquitines) by the beach? Sure. MUST try the local special, fried pork with rice and beans? Well, if you insist… (It cheers my cheap soul when LP’s directives are also inexpensive.) The only MUST for the northeast region that we were unable to follow through on was taking a nighttime kayak tour of a bioluminescent bay, but this was not for lack of trying; we made this trip on the fly, remember, and all the tours were booked. Sorry, LP.

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When LP sent us to El Yunque, the rainforest mountain that rises 3,500 feet an astounding 40 minutes from San Juan, the writer actually apologized for the limited number of hiking trails, as if knowing, “Oh yeah, it’s the Wings. They’re gonna want to get dirty.”

 

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For those of you who hate looking at maps and making reservations and dealing with people on the phone, by all means, go with a tour group. It’s way easier for sure. But for those of you who prefer to make your own plans but want a solicitous, well-traveled friend looking over your shoulder, make Lonely Planet your friend. That’s what it feels like.

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Anyone want to second the motion, or weigh in with a bad experience? The lines are open.

Road Trip becomes “Road” Viaje: ¡Wing’s World Goes to Puerto Rico!

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Road Trip IV, Days 22-25

Si yo tuviera mi diccionario, explicarìa esto en Español. But while I did manage to swing by a bookstore in Ashevile, NC long enough to grab a Lonely Planet: Puerto Rico, I somehow forgot the dictionary part. Luckily just about everyone speaks English here, so our pathetic Spanish is getting us by.

But hold on here. What happened to the Road Trip?! Last post, The Mate and I had entered North Carolina. Wasn’t that, like, the whole point of the journey? A pilgrimage trip to watch the ACC tournament with our buddies from our former, southeastern life?

Yeah. About that.

Well, seem first of all, the ACC tourney isn’t until NEXT weekend. We knew that, alright? We’re not STUPID–just, you know, mildly bonkers eccentric. We had a plan for this pre-tourney week: drive up to Vermont to see our cousins and their new baby, or, if the weather was too bad (’cause, you know, it IS only March, and like I said, we’re not STUPID), then visit our friends and see some sights in DC. (“Michelle! I’m in town! Wanna grab a cuppa?” Sigh. If only. I adore our First Lady.)

ANYway. If you live anywhere east of the Rockies, you know what happened next: Winter Storm Titan. (When did they start naming winter storms, for goodness’ sake? Titan??)

Not only was New England out of the question, so was DC. So, for that matter, was NC, which is, as of this writing, back under snow. Snow was NOT on our itinerary, unless it came with a mountain under it, and a lodge to repair to after snowshoeing. We’re on VACATION, damn it.

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Last year, when the weather turned nasty, we spent a week discovering Florida. We are not Disney-minded people, so it was all about the ecosystems, and it was great. But not great enough to do it again. And, y’know, Puerto Rico is as close to a 51st state as we have, and we’ve been to all 50 of the others, so…

So we did something we never before dreamed of doing: bought airline tickets one day, got on the airplane the next. And here we are.

!!!!!! ¡¡¡¡¡

So far we’ve been exploring the rain forest of El Yunque, where among the first things I did was to knock my camera into a pool. The good news is, I got a couple of pics before this happened. The bad news…well, after my poor camera’s finished drying, I’ll know whether the news is truly bad. For now I’m gonna do like Scarlett O’hara and think about that tomorrow.

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But a broken camera can’t begin to stand up to the nighttime frog chorus here, or the mangoes. Or mofongo, which is almost as much fun to eat as it is to say. Or the SUN.

I am really and truly trying to send some sun to those of you who need it–that’s just about everyone except you Californians and desert dwellers–and I really and truly am not trying to incur envy. I turn Wing’s World into a temporary travel blog and hey, look what happens. If envy does occur, don’t worry–I’ll be back in the nice, soggy northwest soon enough.

But I have to ask: have you ever gone on a spontaneous trip? Where to? Or are you more like me (under normal circumstances), always liking to plan everything?

What Does Brown Mean to You? Road-Tripping In Brown Sign Nation

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Road Trip IV: Days 17-19, Arkansas to Asheville, NC

On these road trips, the scenery often inspires my songwriting. After California I wrote “Redwood Lullaby,” and in the desert, a song called “Starlight Midnight,” about happy solitude. Now that I’m back in the Blue Ridge, just a half-day’s drive from where I grew up, you’d think I’d be inundated with song ideas, right? I mean, first thing The Mate and I did, after gassing up Red Rover, was to go hiking through those rhododendron tunnels I remember so well, up to where the dark grey crags opened to a view of wave after wave of mountains. Beautiful.

But no song. Why? Because I can’t help but feel they’ve all been written. These mountains are so old, and the roots music mine is based on came from exactly here. Rockytop. My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge Mountains. Foggy Mountain Breakdown. In the Pines. Any of Loretta Lynn’s songs. Or Dolly Parton’s (whose atrocious Dollywood we had to negotiate on our way in from Tennessee–thanks a lot, Dolly, I know you meant well). The music world just doesn’t need another mountain song from yours truly.

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(OK, no it does not look like this in February. Can you blame me for using Mary Anne Clark’s photo from Flikr Creative Commons?)

So I’d rather talk about Brown Sign Nation. Are you a member?

You know what I mean. Brown signs mean PARKS. Whether a grand ol’ federal one like Great Smoky Mountains, where we hiked four different trails, a state one like Tennessee’s Natchez Trace, where I biked till I couldn’t feel my fingers, or even a nice lil’ county park like the one we left our car in in Santa Barbara while taking one last ride with Wing Son Two–Brown Sign Nation means safety for our vehicle, scenery & recreation for us. Brown means other healthy people all out smiling at each other, or little kids playing, or no one at all, just herons. Brown means a community putting its money where its heart is–or its eyes, or legs, or…dare I say soul? A country that invests in parks is my kinda country. Ditto city. Ditto any sized community.

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When our kids were little we traveled from playground to playground. Today The Mate and I do the same thing, only instead of swingsets and seesaws, we look for bike paths and hiking trails. Either way, we are happy once we see that brown.

Can you relate? Are you a member of our BSN? Where are your favorite parks? What does Brown mean to you?

Wing’s World Welcomes a New Arrival: The Flying Burgowski

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Road Trip IV, Days 14-16 : Dallas to Natchez Trace State Park, Tennessee.

We interrupt this travel blog to bring you an important announcement:

The Flying Burgowski is launched!

Folks, I have so much I want to talk about. The metaphor of birth that keeps surfacing as I bring my “baby” forth into the world. The gratitude I feel toward all the friends who have helped me turn a manuscript into a Book, and toward my wonderful husband for putting up with my distraction as we travel. The difficulty challenge joy of bringing a book to publication via iPad while on the road. And then there’s all this lovely scenery we’re passing through, and the fact that we camped last night in an Arkansas campground that was so deserted even the rangers abandoned us. (The Mate and I were TOTALLY tempted to take off all our clothes and camp in the nude just for the novelty of it, but it was too cold.)

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But today is Jocelyn Burgowski’s day. So I’m going to close here with the link where you can check my book out further.

https://www.createspace.com/4615462

And this question: do you think a book IS like a baby? Why/why not?

My Kingdom For a Tree: Why Texas Scenery is Like a Giant Strawberry

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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.

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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…)

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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