Mr NYC in Texas

Twenty years ago a buddy and I took a road trip to Texas (followed by some other places). We drove south from college and, after a couple of days, arrived in this vast, fascinating state.

Texas is big. Real big. Like, crazy "wow" big. 

We drove forever, and forever (sometimes I think we're still driving through it). We drove through towns like San Antonio and Abilene, through small towns made up of nothing but trailer parks (I remember one called Sheffield), and through hundreds of miles of west Texas where there was literally nothing at all except roads -- no trees, no people, no houses, no stores, no civilization at all, nothing for miles and miles and miles and miles but flat land ... until you occasionally hit a much-needed gas station. 

Our destination was Big Bend National Park, and it was worth the drive. This is a massive and stunningly gorgeous place with mountains and canyons and stunning natural landscape after stunning natural landscape. We backpacked through the trails and came upon mountain views that went forever and simply stupefy you with their beauty. We did this for a couple of days, sleeping in a tent, until we took off for Houston en route to New Orleans.

Big Bend is not an easy place to get to -- in fact, it's the least visited national park in the country for precisely this reason -- but I urge you to go if you can, words cannot describe how life-changing it is to be there. It reminds you of how amazing the natural world is, how vast and overwhelming, and how us mere people are simply part of a greater design. You feel a great inner peace being in this gorgeous yet quite space. It's very special. (By the way, Big Bend is also the same place where Supreme Court Justice, and New York-native, Antonin Scalia died in 2016.)

We only spent a night in Houston and I don't remember much about it, we got there at night and left early the next day. We ate a Fudruckers and I had perhaps the biggest cheeseburger ever. However, I do recall we drove briefly around downtown and I saw a huge statue of a cello, a modern art exhibit, that seemed very Texas, very non-NYC.

So the saying is true: everything's bigger in Texas. A lot bigger. And, despite its politics, it's a place worth checking out. 

Oh, and if you want to see the definiate movie about Texas, watch Giant from 1956 starring Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as James Dean in his last movie and a young Dennis Hopper in one of his first.