> >The rest of TX really is boring.
>
> You have quite obviously not seen much of Texas. While it is true that there is quite a bit of the Lone Star State that isn't thrilling to drive, there are quite a few other places that are scenic wonderlands. In the east you have swamps, rolling hills, dense forests, and abundant wildlife. In the south and west, you have larger hills--in Texas we might call it a mountain, but I'm sure you wouldn't--and quite a bit of water due to the Rio Grande and it's tributaries. You know, Texas is the largest state in the lower 48. To classify the entire thing as "nothing but oil fields and prairie" is a bit more than exaggeration.
>
> Shan-okay, so I'm proud of my state-dar

I've been worrying about that ever since I read that post. I haven't really seen Texas, but I always thought it would be a great trip. I have zipped across the state line from New Mexico and Oklahoma so that I now claim to have been to Texas, but except for Witchata Falls and El Paso, I really haven't seen much of it. Someday soon I plan to drive to the west coast via I-10 and that will take me all the way across Texas.

Maybe jrock is just someone who doesn't care for Texas-style scenery. I once heard someone say that New Mexico was just a lot of nothing, but when I toured the state, I found it to be one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. It probably still looks much as it has since the end of the ice ages. The lack of people in large areas is a plus to me.

So if I like New Mexico, I guess I should like Texas. It is big enough to have several kinds of climate and a variety of terrain. I can drive all day looking at stuff like that. In wide open spaces, I tend to run segments of the roads parallel to the interstate, just so I can see how it looked before the modern highways were built.
Howard