Road Trip to Texas and Back
Virginia
My sister and I began planning our road trip to Texas like we always do, on a whim. We have a cousin in Dallas, I work remotely, and my sister had spring break, so what better way to spend it than taking Casey J (my big green Ford van) to Texas and back? I’ve been on plenty of extended camping trips in her before, but never a proper stop-in-multiple-states road trip, so off we go!
A lot of my planning and campsite finding happened on The Dyrt app, a super great resource to find campsites all over the country. You can even plot a route, and then it will show you all the possible campgrounds along the way. Another great travel companion was Wildsam’s American South Field Guide, a travel guide with itineraries, notable stops, interviews, short stories, history, and beautiful illustrations. This little guide helped me pass many miles in the passenger seat, so do yourself a favor and check out Wildsam’s collection of field guides before you go on your next road trip!
We started to Texas from Nothern Virginia, on an early Friday morning. Because I didn’t want to take too many days off, I worked the 714 miles to our first official stop in Talladega, Alabama (perks of remote work). We made good time, stopping briefly in Roanoke for coffee and breakfast, then Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga.
Alabama
Parksland Retreat and campground share property lines with Talladega National Forest. Considering I managed to book the last available site at 12:30 am the night before, I was pleasantly surprised with myself for managing to secure such a gem. Our site, Hilltop, was perched on a crest with a fire pit and plenty of great trees for hammocking.
Talladega National Forest
On the second day of our descent to Texas, we explored Cheaha State Park. As someone used to the Blue Ridge Mountain views of Virginia and North Carolina, the highest point in Alabama was very quaint. Still, it was interesting to look out from the overlook and not see other mountains but varying greens stretched out like a quilt to the horizon.
Talladega Super Speedway
Our second night was when things started to get interesting. I didn’t have another campsite booked like I was supposed to two weeks ago. And as a result, Parkland wasn’t available for another night, and all the sites in Cheaha State Park were fully booked for the weekend. Was I worried? No, not quite yet…
Because my van’s AC sucks, we venture inside a Piggly Wiggly to escape the heat and try to get a game plan together. I’m standing in the canned vegetable aisle scanning The Dyrt, trying to find something close with availability, but there was none.
As it turns out, though, we had found ourselves in Talladega on the GEICO 500 race weekend, and my sister informed me for the third time that Riley Green (a country singer she’s in love with) had a concert that night at the Super Speedway in his home state. Annnnnd as luck would have it, buying a ticket for the race gave you access to not only the concert but free parking and overnight camping in the fields across from the speedway. So it was a win-win in their eyes, they got the concert they wanted, and we all had somewhere to sleep for the night. Now we just had to figure out how to get the tickets.
Cell service was less than ideal, so we decided to start making our way to the Speedway, confident we’d figure it out as we went, which seemed to be the recurring theme of our first little road trip. Well, the ticket office was closed when we got there, and after asking several vendors how one goes about buying tickets, they suggested finding a scalper. So instead of that, we called the number on the speedway’s website. By some miracle, they answered and helped us buy the absolute cheapest seats for the weekend securing ourselves a cozy little spot for the night among NASCAR’s finest fans.
As for recounting the rest of that night’s adventures, what happens in Talladega on race weekend, stays in Talladega.
Texas
Plano
Texas was a lot of fun while still managing to remain very relaxing. We got to catch up with my cousin, who had just recently moved there, and see her gorgeous new apartment. Not wanting to take off the whole week, I worked Monday and Tuesday, taking several meetings from her closet with a line of clothes as my background because it was the quietest spot in her one-bedroom apartment.
Though the whole company I work for is remote, most of my coworkers work from the same desk in the same room every day. While I, on the other hand, rarely work from the same place twice in a row, taking full advantage of my remote flexibility to see how many different locations I can take meetings in.
That aside, here are some highlights of the great city of Plano, Texas, just outside Dallas. First, we visited Truck Yard, a creative amalgamation of brews, food, and live music with lots of outdoor space, fun seating options, and yard games. Things get even more quirky when you venture upstairs past one of the bars and walk through double doors into a floor to cathedral ceiling gallery of toilet seat art. The Toilet seat art museum, now found at the Truck Yard in The Colony, Texas, was the life’s work of Barney Smith, a plumber, and artist from San Antonio who created art on over 1,400 toilet seats over several decades.
The absolute highlight of the trip for me was Thursday night at Red River, a famous cowboy dancehall. Imagine a vast open space with live music at one end, a mechanical bull, and bars on all sides. In the middle, dangling beneath four mega screens is a glittering disco ball in the shape of a horse saddle in true Texan style. Next, picture a circular rollerskating rink with its scuffed-up wooden floor looping around a bar in the center of the space. And around that rink, dozens of partners spun, dipped, slid, and two-stepped round and round under flashing lights to the beat emanating from the band.
The next four hours were a hazy dream. It was lady’s night, and all you had to do was stand at one of the many entrances to the rink for no longer than a minute before some cowboy would come up and ask you to dance. And the best part is you didn’t even need to know how. As long as you got an experienced partner, all you had to do was go along for the ride and keep your hand where they could find it. 10 out of 10 would 100% recommend! I’d go back to Texas just for another night at Red River.
Fort Worth
Over our week in Texas, we visited Fort Worth several times. We went there one of the first days, and of course, I was on the hunt for a coffee shop and randomly landed on the shop Summer Moon. And if I needed a second reason to return to Texas, this shop was it. Not only do they wood-fire their beans over Texas oak, but they even concocted their own signature milk, Moon Milk, to complement their espresso perfectly, tell me that’s not incredible?! Every detail was so extra and out of the box, and I loved it!
After being properly caffeinated, we watched as cowboys led longhorn cattle through the historic district. Their heads, weighed down by massive horns, swayed gracefully side to side as if each were delicately balanced on a tight rope and not the cobblestone streets of Fort Worth. Then, in a slow procession, they ambled past us towards the Stockyards, unconcerned with the crowd of people watching and taking pictures from the sidewalk.
The next night we returned to Fort Worth to line dance at Billy Bobs, the biggest honkytonk this side of the Mississippi. Entering Billy Bobs is like entering a cave lit by hundreds of neon signs. This massive complex takes up three acres of land and has an indoor bull riding arena, stage, dance floor, and multiple bars. We caught it on a pretty slow weeknight, but even so, there were many people spread out dancing and mingling on the venue’s main floor.
Texarkana
Our route out of Texas took us up through Arkansas by way of Texarkana, so we stopped at the famous Texarkana U.S. Post Office, the only federal building ever to straddle the border of two different states. We stopped briefly and ventured inside. There were two entrances, one on the Arkansas side and one on the Texas side. The Texas entrance had metal detectors and guards and serves as the entrance to the courthouse. So we entered the Arkansas side instead, where the post office worker called us over and took the time to tell us the history and fun facts of the unique building.
Arkansas
Hot Springs
Our second stop on our way home was Hot Springs National Park. I was hoping to be able to go to a national park in Texas, but both were in the exact opposite corner of the state, and after driving 24 hours to get to Dallas, I didn’t think I’d have much luck convincing my companions to drive an additional 7 hours. So I, at the very least, had to hit a national park on the route back, and Hot Springs was conveniently on the way.
Hot Springs National Park is the only national park within city limits. The park and city intermingle and support one another as the steamy springs bubble along the promenade behind the row of historic bathhouses now turned museum, spa, and even brewery. We had lunch in Superior Bathhouse Brewery, which is not only the ONLY brewery in a national park but also the FIRST brewery to use thermal spring water as the main ingredient.
Not sure that I would go back unless I just happened to be passing through, but it was a very touristy mountain town nonetheless, and I was happy to check another national park off my bucket list!
Tennessee
Our final stop before the last leg of our journey was Fall Creek Falls State Park in Tennessee. A notable caffeine pit stop between The Hot Springs and Chickasaw State Park (where we camped before continuing to Fall Creek Falls) was Brasshorn Coffee Roasters. Also, I would like to mention that Tennessee has some beautifully maintained and organized state parks. Most government park websites are confusing and impossible to navigate, but I will say that the Tennessee state park system has its mess together.
Fall Creek Falls State Park
True to the park’s name, there are soooo many waterfalls and not little dinky ones either but like huge 256-foot serious waterfalls. We visited Crane Creek Falls first. We took a cable trail, which we thought was just a name, but it turns out it’s called cable trail because you cling to a literal 4” cable as you scramble down the side of a mountain that’s only a couple degrees from being a sheer cliff drop off. Once level with the river bed, you emerge from the trees to the edge of a deep blue pool that the falls crashes into. I was impressed. It was beautiful and seemed massive, but my sister, who’d been to Fall Creek Falls before, said just wait; this was a trickle in comparison.
And a trickle it was. We made the winding trek down and down and down, descending into the mist as we followed a procession of other hikers to the bottom of Fall Creek Falls. It was like being caught in a wind tunnel. As soon as we rounded the mountain and came into full view of the falls the temperature dropped 20 degrees and we were soaked through.
Pictures can’t do it justice, but all of us in the valley were dwarfed and made insignificant by its immense presence. It was an incredible and dramatic end, I think, to a very successful first road trip.
