Hello to my fabulous community! Thanks for checking in with me after I was away on holiday with my family. I spent the bulk of the day yesterday in a whirlwind of getting ready for Christmas, writing cards, doing the tree, and singing songs that I didn’t get a chance to write some of what I learned about Texas.

I was supposed to visit Texas for the first time when I was pregnant, our last hurrah before life with children. However, my water broke early (19 weeks) and I was on bed rest until my son was born (three months early). This trip to San Antonio helped us heal from those darkest days of maternal life.

Plus, omg, the food was fantastic!

But there are 5 things I didn’t know about Texas… well, probably a bunch more, too, but I don’t want to bore you.

Texas is Supah-Huge

I will no longer joke that I have hips the size of Texas because, dang, it’s a big state. Know I know Texas was big, but I didn’t have a true concept of exactly how big. It takes about 12 hours to drive North-South across the state from Perryton to South Point. Interestingly, it takes the about the same amount of time to drive from Dallas, Texas to Toronto, Canada as it does to drive from Houston to the Canadian border – about 21 hours. Surprisingly, the downtown core of Houston is smaller than Toronto. In fact, the size of Old Toronto is about 10 square kilometers bigger than downtown Houston. We have more skyscrapers and taller buildings, too. That’s another thing that surprised me. At least in the area of Texas that we were in (San Antonio, Houston, Galveston), there weren’t a lot of high rise buildings and sky scrapers. Maybe it’s because they get more hurricanes?

Texas Had a Navy

In Canadian schools, we aren’t taught an extensive history of the formation of the American States, much less each individual state. Yes, we are quite proud to have created the White House by burning down the state capital, which necessitated it to be white washed… twice. However, beyond the Boston Tea party and the acquisition of Virginia, much of American History isn’t in our school books.

I’m sure what I was taught I promptly forgot because it didn’t involve ancient castles and stone circles. We went to the Tower of the Americas in Hemisphere Park, San Antonio. I was surprised to learn that Texas used to have its own navy. The navy protected the coastal border of the Republic of Texas circa 1836. I didn’t know about the history of Spanish, Mexican, and French Texas in the perpetual need for humans to squabble over land and resources that had been stolen from the indigenous peoples. When I thought of Texas, my mind always saw cowboys, not sailors.

Fun Fact: According to the historical information presented inside the Tower of the Americas, the Cowboy Era only lasted 20 years in the earliest decades of state expansion.

There were Camels in Texas

If cowboys wrangled camels instead of cows, would they have been named camboys? In 1857, the Secretary of War purchased and imported 75 camels to assist with the expansion of the West and the war effort as beasts of burden. They became part of the Texas Camel Corps. However, the animals proved to be more difficult than expected. They scared horses and smelled bad. Plus, the mule lobby protested against the import of more camels (presumably to maintain the mule industry). Within two decades, all the camels had been sold off. One loose camel terrorized the wilds and was nicknamed the Red Ghost, a hideous beast with a skeletal rider saddled to its back.

It Snows in Texas

Home, home on the snow? We thought we were travelling to a warm state to get away from the growing chill in Toronto. Wrong! Depending on where the snow falls in the Supah-Huge state, it doesn’t snow often, for very long, or with significant volume compared to more northerly climes, but it does snow in Texas. Some people we spoke with had never seen snow before this year. An Uber driver told us that when San Antonio gets a one inch dusting, the city shuts down. We laughed and laughed, of course. Another local we bumped into in the Houston suburbs said he expects cold and snow in the winter following a big hurricane. The last big snowfall came after the hurricane in 2009.

Buc-ees!!

Why don’t we have Buc-ee’s in Canada? We have the space for it!

Buc-ee’s is a roadside convenience store and gas station on steroids! They have more flavours of beef jerky than I’ve ever seen – an entire deli counter full of the meaty goodness! And they have the cleanest rest stop bathrooms in America (quite possibly the biggest). Buc-ee’s is uniquely Texan, for the time being. I heard a rumour that it’s expanding into Louisiana and Florida. We had brisket and egg, and sausage and egg tacos as our grab and go lunch en route from San Antonio to Galveston. Loved the warm, smokey goodness. In fact, the small chain with a big punch impressed us so much, we stopped there twice on the same road trip. Fun fact: The store was named after the founder, his dog, and his favourite toothpaste. My only criticism: they don’t have milk for tea. I had to use coffee whitener. Blech.

 

And yes, Texans really do say “Y’all” as often as they breathe. We met lovely folks and I’m glad we’ll be keeping in touch with many of them. Have you ever been to Texas?