2025 Road Trip: Part 7 (more Texas)

Dallas to Big Spring TX

Day 7
5.28.25

I was excited to heat up some leftovers from Riscky's BBQ to include in our final breakfast in Dallas - the smoked sausages were delicious with omelettes! We had a little bit of free time to spend before the Museum of Art opened at 11am that morning, so after somehow fitting everything back inside Apollo, ready for the journey ahead, we stopped to visit White Rock Lake, a reservoir near to downtown with botanical gardens on its eastern shore. We didn't have enough time to see the whole botanical gardens, so instead we found a nice view overlooking the city from Winfrey Point, surrounded by a meadow of various flowers.

We had some fun experimenting with my Nikon camera here, seeing how to best photograph each other among the many plant stems.

Yilin at Winfrey Point, White Rock Lake, TX

More Indian Blankets

A tiny green lacewing hanging out on Queen Anne's Lace

Our joyful romp through the meadow was cut short when Yilin discovered she must have stepped on a fire ant home by mistake, and consequently got stung on her ankle multiple times :( So we got out of there quickly and applied some bug bite cream asap.

Next stop was the Dallas Museum of Art, which apart from a few special exhibitions has free admission, and only had a reasonable parking fee for the garage if arriving by car. As many museums are, I felt this one was a bit of a maze, and since I'm writing about this a few weeks after the fact, I certainly have forgotten a few details. We saw some pottery and ceramic artifacts from all over the world, keeping our eyes peeled for unusual cat specimens of course. Sculptures of bronze and marble were centerpieces in certain rooms. A couple paintings of musicians caught our eye, a trumpeter, and a harp lesson scene, where I was pleased to see the F and C strings had been properly colored blue and red respectively!

I also found a playable kalimba (thumb piano) with an unusual scale that seemed to start in minor but finish in major. A big surprise was to find a painting of my twin in one room, so we took a picture together—I even had the right color shirt on that day!

These creatures below however must take the cake for the most interesting animal depictions of the museum. Your guess is as good as mine for what they might be, but the middle one is giving me vibes of Sid from Ice Age.

A portrait in the large atrium

After getting our fill of the museum, we got our steps in and walked a few blocks down to the Giant Eyeball, truly a sight of wonder in Dallas. Yilin correctly guessed that it would be a blue eye, not a brown one, so behold:

Dallas's Giant Eyeball

Yilin wanted us to visit the Chapel of Thanks-Giving, which is known for its unusual spiral shape and beautiful stained glass windows on the roof. When we arrived, nobody was there, and we got the interior to ourselves for a few minutes. The circular room was lined with chairs dotted around the edge, and we could look up to see a rainbow of color through the windows above.

Spot Yilin on the ramp below the spiral!

The stained glass from inside the Chapel

With a lot of Texas left to cross before getting toward New Mexico, where we'd be visiting a cluster of national parks and other natural areas, it was time to head out of town, but first I wanted to try another location to buy a Benchmark atlas for New Mexico. The REI staff from yesterday suggested I try Whole Earth Provision Co., which I did, however I struck out once again, since they only carried the Texas atlas, which we'd be leaving in a day, so I didn't find it worth purchasing. Instead, I decided to utilize Google Maps' feature of saving certain areas for offline use, for areas where we might be camping and have spotty service. I've used the feature before, but it seems to be easier to use now, and allows for multiple saved regions at once.

No trip to Texas would be complete without a visit to Buc-ee's, so I was determined to find one and check out what the big fuss is about. Emilia had sent me a small plushie keychain of Buc-ee the beaver since moving to the Dallas area, but I had to set foot inside one for myself. All I knew before is that they are known for having some of the largest gas stations in the world (the record holder is by Houston and has 120 gas pumps), and the accompanying stores are massive, and have an entire home goods section. We were eager to see what we would find there!

Turns out the rumors are true, and it's larger than some big box stores I've been to... and the choices of food were amazing. A barbecue bar with pulled pork, brisket, or chicken sandwiches being ready made, many flavors of jerky, Buc-ee's beaver nuggets (a sweet caramel puffed snack of sorts), ice cream and slushies, and more things than I can remember. So many types of clothing and gifts adorned with Buc-ee on them, including gaudy hot-pink swimsuits, the biggest cast iron frying pan I've ever seen, a camping gear section with grills for sale, and the aforementioned home goods section as well.

Buc-ee-mobile complete with a buck-teeth grill

We left the store with some delicious pork and brisket sandwiches!

With our tanks full of barbecue, and Apollo's tank full of Buc-ee's gas, we pointed ourselves west and headed out of town, even though it was already after 5pm by this point in the day. We didn't have too far to cover this day, at least at Texas speeds, it wouldn't take forever. We were north of Fort Worth by the time we found Buc-ee's, so it was about 300 miles to Big Spring, where I was hoping to snag a free camping spot right out of town. We were full enough from our sandwiches that we didn't need to prepare a dinner at our campsite, in fact it would be quite late by the time we arrived anyway, so I thought it would be fun to meander a little bit before getting onto I-20 in Abilene, so we headed west to Jacksboro on US-380 in search of some wind farms. I remember on my last trip through Texas, which was further north near Amarillo, I was amazed at how many wind turbines were around, but with relatively flat land, it makes sense to utilize the wind that picks up speed here.

Texas has an interesting road structure, featuring FM roads (farm-to-market) that fall beneath state and US highways in the hierarchy. Despite their lower class, these roads are paved and maintained by the state, designed to connect rural areas to larger highways. For those looking to see more into the countryside of Texas, these roads are a good choice, as they hardly have any traffic and bring you through lots of pretty areas, but are still blessed with fast speed limits. We traveled on FM-4 for quite awhile, and did spot some wind turbines close (and cows) to the road, though the best views were to come later.

FM-4 near Jacksboro TX

One big problem with this type of landscape with lots of cows, is it tends to attract hordes of bugs, specifically mosquitoes, and in the evening they will quickly coat your windshield, significantly reducing visibility if traveling west into the sun. I made a quick stop in Albany to do some window cleaning, and pulled up to the Shackelford County Courthouse, a very cool piece of architecture in this otherwise sleepy town where I suspect everyone knows everyone.

Shackelford County Courthouse

We were stared down by a white a gray kitty who stepped by as I was pulling out of the parking area.  From here onward, the light was fading into a brilliant gradient of blue to orange to red, and as I approached the highway, Yilin grabbed my Nikon while we passed through a sea of wind turbines in every direction. Of many blurry photos (it was getting dark and she was shooting from a moving car, so no surprise) this one turned out really cool, and even captured a crescent moon near the top.

Wind turbines along TX-351, Shackelford County

The next hundred or so miles went by fast as we entered the interstate, hanging out with the late night crowd of truck drivers, and dreaming of how our upcoming days in New Mexico would be. My friend Noah had visited Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands National Parks on his trip from Maine to the Grand Canyon in 2014, and I recall his high praise of both locations, and thus quite excited to experience them myself finally.

We did better than our midnight arrival into the Arkansas campsite, as it was only 11pm as we turned off to Big Spring, where we'd be camping for the night. By this night, Yilin and I had gotten into a system of how we set up our camp for the night. The tent is easiest if we put it up together, and then she'll hop inside and inflate our air mattress, and once it's ready I can hand in the rest of our bedding/supplies from the car. Tonight's campsite was on sandy/rocky soil so no tent stakes, but instead we use the desert style - tie some string around rocks and loop it through each corner of the tent. If we were eating dinner there, I would also get our cook set up and start cooking as well, but no need for it this evening since we were still full from Buc-ee's. The temperature had been on the warmer side so far, but was comfortable with just a blanket and we didn't have to bring out the sleeping bags (yet...), and the air was pleasantly dry out there.

After spending a few days in Texas, and visiting at least Dallas and Fort Worth, I have to say I was surprised much I liked it. For some reason, I've always had a weird feeling about the state, either from hear-say, or stereotypes of crazy cowboys, which I'm sure exist, but overall I enjoyed the food scene—it's great if you like BBQ and big portions of it lol, as well as the chance to see a place like Fossil Rim, and more of the countryside.  One disappointment was not being able to witness a Texan create their own exit off the highway by driving into the grass onto the frontage road...I've seen videos but I hoped to witness it firsthand...I guess I'll have to come back!

Day 7 Route map: 368 miles
Total mileage: 2318