What can you say about Texas, its big, so are its people and their opinions of Texas are even bigger.
I was surprised at how pretty the country was, rolling hills and scrubby woods, green river gorges and well placed rocky outcroppings with sprinklings of deer and big horn sheep.
Living in the oil fed state, I can see how Texans can doubt pollution, environmental conservation and even social issues; when your surrounded by clean new houses, ample game hunting, big roads that led to truck filled church parking lots of cheerful folks, the worlds issues seem exaggerated and distant.
Austin is the state capital and its capital building is a replica of the D.C. original, only bigger!
Being the right-wing, gun shooting capital of America, it was a surprise to find out the Capital was liberal, democratic, educated and even a little bit hipster.
The University of Texas was impressive, with an annual budget of over 1 billion! The busy campus is placed on a hill above the government buildings, looking downtown, to the river where a large bat colony live under a bridge.
Every evening the bats come streaming out from under the bridge, trailing off like wisps of smoke into the night, strangely pretty. Another highlight was the Alamo theater, that serves locally brewed beer and meals during a movie; its a great addition to the movie experience, hopefully it will catch on elsewhere.
As we moseyed on West, we passed thru some small pioneer towns where the hard working Mexicans dominate, how strange all this over the top Texan stuff must be for them if it felt strange to us.
