Texas Highways Magazine April 2022

Rooms With a View When describing life on “the Mountain” at McDonald Observatory, employees of the West Texas astronomical research facility aren’t afraid to gush. “It sounds cheesy, but we often greet each other with, ‘Another day in paradise,’” says Katie Kizziar, the assistant director for education and outreach. “A lot of people use that phrase, but we actually mean it.” The 64 astronomers, scientists, and support staff who live on-site make up a self-sustaining community, complete with its own volunteer fire department and water and sewage treatment facility. On April 29-30, residents of the Mountain will welcome the public to McDonald Observatory’s first Dark Skies Festival. “It’s a chance for us to try to engage our neighboring communities to come have fun, see what it is we do out here, and…

Dangling 140 feet from the mouth of Devil’s Sinkhole in Rocksprings, Austin-based photographer Erich Schlegel felt the strap on his brand new camera break loose. “It happened in a millisecond,” Schlegel says of the moment he instinctively caught it. Once he’d successfully rappelled down to the sinkhole floor, a team of cavers helped him capture images for “What Lies Beneath” (Page 38). Other than the close call, “the lighting was definitely the biggest challenge,” he says. “The actual going in and out was one of the easiest parts.” In addition to spelunking for Texas Highways, Schlegel shoots for a variety of clients, from the Austin Opera to USA Today, where he covers giant slalom skiing. Though he normally works alone, he credits the professional cavers (pictured above) who helped him…

On Route 66 Although I realize Lauren Hough’s article was a family reminiscence, a search for corroboration of her late grandfather’s stories, Shamrock should not be mentioned in a Texas travel magazine without referencing some of its other notable tourist sites [“Getaway Driver,” March]. A block west of the Pioneer West Museum is a monument encasing a fragment of Ireland’s Blarney Stone, and a block south from the Blarney Stone is Texas’ tallest water tower. And for Elvis fans, Hough’s article ignored the most important information about the U-Drop Inn: You can sit in the booth where Elvis sat during a stop on a drive from Memphis to Hollywood. Shamrock was an unexpectedly interesting stop on my two-day backroads drive from Denver, Colorado, to Dallas. Ruben Perlmutter, Dallas I Need a Dog-Gone Break As…

Sean Fitzgerald is always up for a thrill ride. “I used to go to Six Flags a lot when I was younger,” the Dallasbased photographer says. “While the rides and coasters have changed, the sounds and smells and buzz in the air are all the same. It makes me feel like a kid again.” While photographing roller coasters at Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington for “Upside-Down Smile” (Page 21), Fitzgerald turned his camera to the sky to capture two adjacent rides: The Riddler Revenge, a pendulum that swings riders 147 feet high at up to 70 mph; and the Texas SkyScreamer, which twirls riders in a circle nearly 400 feet in the air. “I love the motion and energy,” he says. “That was really the feeling I wanted to…

Before Western settlers arrived and settled Haskell, nomadic bands of Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, and Kickapoo hunted bison across northwest Texas. Today, these vast Rolling Plains surround Haskell—the Haskell County seat and a local economy anchored by mom and pop businesses. Pharmacist Lonnie Meredith moved to Haskell in 1991 to work at the local pharmacy, The Drug Store, a business he bought nine years later. Living an hour’s drive from Abilene and a 90-minute drive from Wichita Falls, residents in this slice of the Big Country rely on the local pharmacy for prescriptions and other medicines. Though he retired in 2020 and sold The Drug Store to another independent owner, Meredith remains active in the community as a cattle rancher. Ranching has long been a cornerstone of the regional economy, along…

SIX FLAGS OVER TEXAS 2201 Road to Six Flags, Arlington. 817-640-8900; sixflags.com/overtexas SIX FLAGS FIESTA TEXAS 17000 W. I-10, San Antonio. 210-697-5050; sixflags.com/fiestatexas As a kid, I considered the Judge Roy Scream roller coaster at Six Flags Over Texas to be my personal Everest. The ride debuted at the Arlington amusement park in 1980, borrowing its name from Judge Roy Bean, the infamous adventurer-turned-Texas justice of the peace, who survived being hanged after he shot a Mexican official over Bean’s entanglement with a woman. Considering the coaster’s seemingly dangerous drop of 65 feet, I wondered about my own chances of survival. It was 1989, and I was 11. My hair permed; my bangs teased up high for my first amusement park visit. I wanted to be like my teenage babysitters who bragged…