We set out from Houston in our giant SUV, but not before sampling the many delights of H-town: a day at NASA, wondering why they’d go to all this trouble building stuff just to fake a landing on the moon; watching the baseball home team, the Astros – if I’m not mistaken that was the name of the Jetson’s dog – lose a game to the Cleveland Reds; stuffing our faces with low and slow cooked BBQ brisket and ribs, oysters, crawfish, and fried chicken; biking in a bike hostile city where the mayor is having the cycle lanes ripped out and reverting them to car lanes – after all, this is oil and gas country; finding a neighbourhood pub where nobody knows our names.
Our meagre luggage rattles around the Grand Canyon that is the back of the SUV as we hit the Houston highways, a spaghetti tangle of concrete six to eight lanes wide, and throbbing with trucks so large they could carry other trucks inside them like Russian nesting dolls. There’s a few stretches of construction (like they really need more roads) and at one point things get… tight. On our left a concrete construction barrier, on our right, bearing dangerously close, a massive black semi. The cold wash of adrenaline shoots through me and I let out a scream that possibly breaks the sound barrier. We’re grateful for the surge of power and escape our lovely V8 offers.
We take a stop off the highway and roll into Schulenburg, a small town with German heritage and a reputation for good apfelstrudel. Schulenburg on a Monday has all the hustle and bustle of a haunted post office. The Texas Polka Museum? Closed. Ben’s Gun Store? Closed. But Kountry Bakery? Open and glorious. We walk in and, resisting the temptation of a slab of strudel so dense and sugary it could stop a moving car or clog a major artery, settle for just a slice. It’s worth the stop and settles our jangling nerves. Carrying on the lesser road that runs parallel with the highway, we breeze through Flatonia without stopping for the MAGA Café’s Trump Burger, though we’re pretty sure it’s the best burger, the greatest burger, the burger no one else could get a deal on.
We have our sights set on Buc-ee’s. I’m pretty sure you haven’t been to Texas if you haven’t been to Buc-ee’s. Google Buc-ee’s and the description reads “a chain of travel centers known for clean bathrooms and many fueling positions”. So modest! Buc-ee’s is so much more. It’s a sacred roadside cathedral to consumerism, where you can not only fuel up, but also buy 47 varieties of beef jerky, a camo bikini, a bag of beaver chips, and a Jesus air freshener all before you even pee in their famously spotless bathrooms. So how lucky are we that the biggest Buc-ee’s, with acres of store space and 120 fuel pumps, is at Luling on our very route? We will never again see so much junk food and crass commercial product under one roof – unless that roof is in Washington. The buck-toothed beaver logo adorns every item. The Texan founder, Arch Aplin, demonstrating inspiration should not always be translated into action, combined his nickname, Beaver, with the name of his dog, Buck. We escape after using the spotless facilities and buying a pack of beaver chips, which are remarkably good potato chips.
Onward to San Antonio. By some miracle we reached San Antonio just in time to throw the keys of our gas-guzzling behemoth at the hotel valet. Two days of parking costs about as much as our airline tickets – but at least we don’t have to parallel park.
With no time to waste, we sprint to the Alamo to meet our tour guide, because, history waits for no one, especially not people who stopped for strudel and beaver chips. We made it. We remembered. And we immediately forgot everything because it was 35 degrees C (95 F)and we were sweating out our body weight.
Next stop: Austin—if we survive I-35. Stay tuned.
