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A few summers ago, I visited my 50th state, which was Alaska. It took me 13 years to get from 49 (North Dakota) to the big 5-0. I saved the biggest for last, and Alaska was everything I expected. At the end of the trip, while killing time at a souvenir shop near the Port of Ketchikan, I came across a shirt showing the state of Texas in the center of the Alaska map, taking up less than half of the landmass.
After 20 years of visiting Texas, this is my favorite road trip
As someone who has been exploring the United States for 30 years, I like to be surprised. And the state that still surprises me the most every time I visit is Texas. I first visited Dallas and Houston for a Pearl Jam concert in 2003, and most recently took an Amarillo-to-Arlington road trip. Several trips in between took me from the touristy River Walk in San Antonio to Austin, Johnson City, and the Texas Hill Country. If there's one common thread holding each of these Texas visits together, it's that I felt like I was visiting a different state each time.
After more than two decades exploring the largest state of the Lower 48, Texas feels like that friend I run into every year or two and get to know all over again each time we meet. From a sad attempt to devour a 72-ounce sirloin and enjoying Lao food along Route 66 in Amarillo to discovering regional Vietnamese food in Houston's vast Chinatown, every time I visit Texas, I have experiences that are a bit more memorable than those in other states.
While I hope to spend at least two more decades exploring Texas, here’s why you should visit now and what you should do while you’re in the Lone Star State.
Amarillo might be the most underrated city in Texas
This was my favorite Texas road trip. I started in Amarillo, which I consider to be the top must-visit small city in Texas. While Amarillo would be the third-largest city in Pennsylvania and the fifth-largest in New York, it does not even crack the top 15 in the Lone Star State. November of 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of Route 66, and one of my favorite stretches is the Sixth Street Historic District, west of Downtown Amarillo. A Lao restaurant here (not the only one in town) has murals depicting rural life in Southeast Asia, stamped with Route 66 both inside and out. While Lao food is becoming easier to find across the United States, the same cannot be said for record stores. As someone who grew up spending much of my free time shopping for cassettes and later CDs, High Fidelity Records Store was as good to see as the bowl of hot and sour seafood soup at Little Laos was to taste.
While parts of Downtown are walkable, most of Amarillo's Texan attractions are spread out and require a car to reach. My holy trinity of personal firsts during my Amarillo visit were my first adult attempt at horseback riding, my first time firing a handgun at a makeshift outdoor range surrounded by dirt roads and windmills, and finally, a visit to Cadillac Ranch, where I attempted to spray paint the Slayer logo into one of the partially buried face-down shells of former luxury cars. I also made a pathetic attempt to eat a 72-ounce sirloin at The Big Texan. While I did well enough with the three aforementioned firsts, the much smaller Mexican tourist next to me managed to eat half of his steak, while I was lucky to finish 18 ounces at dinner.
This Texas city is basically Abbey Road for Buddy Holly fans
Lubbock is to Buddy Holly fans what Tupelo is to Elvis fans. And with Buddy Holly's 90th birthday in September, there has never been a better time to explore the Buddy Holly Center and the adjacent J.I. "Jerry" Allison House, where "That'll Be The Day" was written. Multiple events are planned for Buddy's would-have-been 90th birthday, but even if you can't visit in early September, the famous sunglasses painted into the street at 18th Street and Buddy Holly (formerly Crickets) Avenue are there to stay and are the closest thing Texas has to an Abbey Road for music fans.
Texas has three times as many wind turbines as second-place Iowa. So it's no accident that the world's largest windmill collection is outside Lubbock at the American Windmill Museum. Most of the 200-windmill collection is indoors, but you can see several outside the entrance, which is high enough for a view of the tip of Lubbock's small skyline. And while you will see hundreds of windmills during the two-hour road trip from Amarillo to Lubbock along I-27, you'll see what seems like thousands along US-84, which takes you to Sweetwater, where you'll catch I-20 to Abilene.
While I considered Lubbock and especially Amarillo pleasant surprises for their quirky attractions, what surprised me most was just how windy both cities are. While the city with 'windy' in its slogan does not crack the top ten in America, both Amarillo and Lubbock do. So when I arrived in Abilene, I felt relieved that I at least did not have to hold onto my fitted New York Mets hat lest it take off like a kite into the open spaces of West Texas.
The Texas stop that feels like stepping back in time
Abilene is The Storybook Capital of America. And while I'm a bit old for children's books, I did appreciate the dozens of bronze sculptures next to the DoubleTree where I stayed. As a history buff, I preferred spending a couple of hours at the 12th Armored Division Memorial Museum and learning about how said division liberated the Kaufering IV concentration camp during World War II.
While Abilene is a cozy place that feels like a small town with a classic theater and coffee shops downtown where everyone seems to know one another, it's still a city of 130,000. To get a feel for late 19th-century Texas, head south to Buffalo Gap, where you can see what a jail and courthouse looked like when the Lone Star State was only a few decades into statehood. And while Jay's is an ideal Texas BBQ stop in Abilene, my favorite steakhouse experience in West Texas has been Perini Ranch Steakhouse, which is, as the name implies, a working ranch that can feel closer to 1883 than 1983, when it opened.
I thought Arlington was just for sports, and then I actually visited
Like Amarillo and Lubbock, Abilene has a small airport with direct flights to Dallas-Fort Worth. I recommend driving to Arlington, which recently hosted the World Cup and sits south of DFW, between the two cities the airport is named after. I used to think of Arlington as where the Dallas baseball and football teams play. But there's more than that. The Arlington Museum of Art always has interesting exhibits, including the Game of Thrones one I saw when I was in town. And the National Medal of Honor Museum opened next door in 2025. I also attended my first IndyCar race in Arlington and tried Tex-Ethiopian fusion cuisine for the first time at Smoke'N Ash BBQ. Just imagine scooping up brisket and smoked chicken with injera at a casual strip mall spot, which every major food editor seems to try when in town.
You can visit two of Texas's biggest cities without renting a car
I've been to Houston and San Antonio a combined seven times. The majority of my writing about Texas has focused on these two cities, which are also the two largest in the Lone Star State. Thanks to the general walkability of San Antonio's Pearl District and downtown area, Houston's METRORail, and Amtrak's Sunset Limited route, which connects the two cities with no stops in between, you can do both without a car. I've done it with and without and prefer the flexibility of a car so I can explore areas that you can't get to know in a single visit, like Houston's Chinatown and the Little Saigon within its borders, which is the place I would head straight to if I only had a few hours in the city.
Houston is fresh off hosting the World Cup and has multiple art fairs coming to town this fall, as well as the annual Southern Smoke Festival. Speaking of food, Houston has the most diverse food scene in Texas, especially when it comes to West African and Southeast Asian. I discovered regional Vietnamese and Viet-Cajun food here and was also blown away by unapologetically American invention-seeming dishes like Chef Nikki Tran's Vietnamese pizza.
Both Houston and San Antonio have relatively new food halls in repurposed buildings that serve as excellent places to take the pulse of each city. In Houston, it's POST, located inside a former Downtown post office. In San Antonio, Pullman Market and Food Hall at Bottling are one block apart in the Pearl District, which is within walking distance of Downtown. It may take a bit longer, but the Riverwalk route is by far the most scenic. While I personally recommend Hotel Valencia Riverwalk for an upscale stay with good dining options inside and easy access to most downtown attractions, Hotel Emma at Pearl is ideal if you've already stayed Downtown and/or are visiting during the weekend and want to be near the outdoor Farmers and Makers Markets. And because Hotel Emma is housed in a turn-of-the-20th-century brewhouse, it's particularly engaging for history buffs. This fall, San Antonio will host a free jazz festival and a one-night Diwali celebration, both in Hemisfair, which is where you can also try Dough Pizzeria Napoletana, one of my favorite pizzerias outside of New York.
