Road Trips

Texas leads the nation with 675,580 miles of highways and byways, enabling you to get to anyplace you want to visit at whatever pace you want to travel. While I enjoy the 85-mile per hour speed limit on Interstate-10 once you head west of San Antonio, I still prefer to travel the Lone Star State at a much slower pace.

Traveling Texas backroads yields treasures that are easily missed when you travel by faster routes. Not the least of these treasures are the many small towns, farms, and ranches along two-lane arteries off the beaten paths. I have made a list of some of my favorite things about traveling at a slower pace along Texas backroads.
10. Interesting old houses and buildings. | Every small town has interesting old houses and buildings, some in a permanent state of disrepair, melting away in the heat of the passing years. These places stir my imagination. I also enjoy seeing how entrepreneurs have restored or repurposed old houses and buildings and turned them into craft shops, specialty boutiques, restaurants, and more. It’s nice to see new life breathed into old buildings.

9. Historic hotels. | Many of the smaller destinations in Texas have some of bigger and better historic hotels. I especially like the old Gage Hotel in Marathon and Hotel Limpia in Ft. Davis. These old hotels are beautifully appointed with antiques and offer comfortable common areas where you can actually enjoy relaxed conversations around the hearth with other guests.
8. Steering wheel salutes. | When driving Texas backroads, especially in a pick-up truck, you can expect the person in the approaching vehicle to give you a quick salute with the hand on top of his steering wheel. Or, if you make way for the guy behind you to pass you on some two-lane backroad, he will generally give you a courtesy thank-you wave. The good thing about all this is that folks in Texas wave at you with all of their fingers!

7. Incredible hospitality. | You can expect to meet some really friendly folks when you travel Texas backroads. Once, when my wife and I were running late, we phoned ahead to tell the small town hotel of our late arrival. The lady told us not to worry. “If you get here late,” she said, “we’ll leave the key in an envelope with your name on it on the front porch. It will unlock the front door to the hotel and also the door to your room.”
6. The Texas Stop Sign. | You will not see many Golden Arches when traveling Texas backroads, but you will see the Texas Stop Sign in almost every small town you come to — Dairy Queen. Enjoying a cone dipped in chocolate at a Dairy Queen in a small town is the equivalent of ordering one of those fancy coffee drinks at a big city Starbucks.

5. Home-style cooking and generous portions. | When traveling the backroads, you should always take time to ask the locals about the best places to eat. Or, just pick a place that looks interesting and stop in for a meal. That’s how I have discovered some really good places to eat that offer home-style-made-from-scratch cooking offered in generous portions complete with a tall glass of sweet tea. Oh my!
4. Historical markers. | Texas has a great Historical Marker system in place throughout the State. One advantage to not being in a hurry is that you can take the time to stop and read some really interesting things about what happened at or near wherever you happen to be.

3. County courthouses and town squares. | County seats in Texas boast some of the best-looking courthouses in the nation. These prominent courthouses are generally centrally located and adjacent to inviting town squares where people actually sit on park benches and have conversations.
2. New friends. | One thing I enjoy most about slower travel along Texas backroads is meeting interesting people along the way. On one road trip, my wife Cheryl and I met a young lady from New York who had left the corporate world to seek new employment and adventure in small town Texas. She was excited about making a new start in really small town. This New Yorker turned Texan is one of many interesting people we have met over the years because we travel at a slower pace.

1. Sharing the adventure. | I have traveled many backroad miles all by myself in my pick-up truck. But, I prefer to travel with my wife or a friend in the passenger seat. I believe that the beauty of the Lone Star State is made even more enjoyable when you share the experience with a loved one or a friend. So, the next time you venture out, take someone along and enjoy Texas.

One of the best resources for planning a Texas road trip is a map with lots of detail. That’s how I discovered Dime Box, Texas — a small town located 12-miles northeast of Giddings. When I saw the name of this little town on my map, I knew that I had to go there by way of the most meandering route available.
Dime Box was founded sometime between 1869 and 1877 by a man named Joseph S. Brown who built a sawmill about three miles northwest of the present community. Within a short period, other settlers came to the area and the community became known as Brown’s Mill.
Brown’s Mill had no post office in its early days, so settlers placed their outgoing mail and a dime in a box in Brown’s office for weekly delivery to Giddings. However, when the postal service officially opened a post office in Brown’s Mill in 1884, they asked that the community be renamed to avoid confusion between Brown’s Mill and Brownsville. So, the community was renamed Dime Box.
In 1913, when the Southern Pacific Railroad built a line three miles from Dime Box, the folks there moved closer to the railroad. The original settlement became known as Old Dime Box and the new town became known as Dime Box. The railroad brought in new settlers and, at its peak, the population of Dime Box grew to five-hundred. The population has since declined to a little more than three-hundred people.
Dime Box had its fifteen-minutes of fame in the 1940’s when a CBS broadcast kicked off the national March of Dimes drive from Dime Box. Today, Dime Box is a quiet little community. I enjoyed driving around the few streets and had a pleasant chat with a local who was out for a walk.
Dime Box is certainly not on any destination list you will ever find in the glossy pages of Condé Nast Traveler. But for any backroads adventurer, it is a place worth visiting, if for no other reason than its interesting name and history. The next time you look at a Texas map, pay particular attention to those small out-of-the-way places with interesting names. And the next time you go from here to wherever, take a detour to see those places for yourself.