Texas Highways Magazine October 2015

Austin photojournalist Erich Schlegel suffers from extreme wanderlust. On various assignments over the decades, he has traveled the planet to cover 12 Olympic Games, four Super Bowls, Mount Everest Base Camp, and war zones in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Albania, Bosnia, and Sri Lanka. His adventurous résumé flows like the rapids on Rio Mantaro in Peru, which he photographed while on an Amazon River expedition in 2012. Erich also makes regular trips to the Rio Grande Valley, where, as a teenager in the 1970s, he indulged his inner explorer on the area’s resacas, or oxbow lakes. “Our family moved from Mexico City to Brownsville in the summer of 1973,” Erich tells me. “I was crazy about fishing, and our new home fronted Resaca de la Guerra. I fished every…

I was just in Wimberley. It’s alive and well and open for business. Prayers for recovery are still appreciated. A beautiful spot! KAREN VOORHEES, Kingwood OUR FAVORITE SOCIAL MEDIA OF THE MONTH... I firmly believe you should not marry someone until you have taken a long trip with them. Sherry Long Christensen, Buffalo Springs On the Cadillac Ranch: Always evolving—different every time we stop there. Now it’s become interactive performance art. Benny Hickerson Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram Urban Escape I spent several of my young years being taken to Brackenridge Park in San Antonio [September] almost every weekend. My mother was a single mother of three young children and had no vehicle. So we hopped the city bus and spent almost a whole day of the weekend at the park. My mom gave us an education…

26º 08’ 29.00” N 97º 23’ 24.42” W Gulf Coast Resaca de los Cuates winds about 60 miles across the Rio Grande Valley from near Laguna Atascosa to a couple of miles west of Russelltown. The best views come from exploring by kayak or canoe. Launch points are particularly easy to access near Bayview, where photographer Erich Schlegel found this ranch scene. If paddling isn’t an option, roads like FM 2480/San Roman Road, which cuts across the resaca at three different points, provide glimpses of the waterway. For more information about canoe/kayak access points for resacas in the Rio Grande Valley, visitwww.southtexaspaddlers.com. To order a print of this photograph, call 866/962-1191, or visit www.texashighwaysprints.com.…

The Explore exhibits, like those throughout the DoSeum, tackle those major kid questions that come up on a daily basis and address them from multiple angles. NOW THAT MY SON AUGUST IS ON THE CUSP OF turning five years old, he’s stumbled upon the concept of “infinity” to express a world that is becoming larger and more awe-inspiring by the day. “Can you count to infinity?” “The redwood trees—are they infinity big?” I know that most young minds are insatiable for answers that only lead to more and more questions (and, occasionally, exhausted parents). So it was that my husband and I toted our inquisitive boy and his seven-month-old brother, Crosby, to check out the DoSeum, San Antonio’s new 104,000-square-foot children’s museum, which opened in June. The DoSeum, located on Broadway Street less…

I’LL CONFESS. I’M ADDICTED TO BUTTERFLIES. The mere thought of Silver-banded Hairstreaks, Red-bordered Pixies, White Peacocks, and Zebra Heliconians sets my heart racing. So I recently packed my camera and binoculars and headed for the National Butterfly Center in Mission. This 100-acre butterfly paradise lies in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, where 325 types of butterflies—an astonishing 72 percent of all butterfly species seen in Texas and more than half of those known in the United States—have been documented. At the National Butterfly Center, more than 100 species of native plants in 30 acres of gardens attract butterflies, birds, and even a bobcat or two. Jeffrey Glassberg, founder of the North American Butterfly Association, first began to dream of a national butterfly center during a visit to the Valley in the mid-1990s,…

WHEN EMPRESARIO GREEN DeWitt was given approval from the Mexican government in 1825 to establish a 400-family colony in south Texas, there was no evidence to suggest that these new residents would become revolutionaries as well as pioneers. But it’s safe to say that the Mexicans would go on to regret their support of this expansionism. From Mexican President Santa Anna’s perspective, the homesteaders of DeWitt ’s community near the junction of the Guadalupe and San Marcos rivers were a bunch of ingrates. At the personal request of DeWitt , he had loaned them a six-pounder bronze cannon for self-defense in 1831. When he wanted it back in 1835, as tensions between the settlers and Santa Anna’s government escalated, the fledgling Texans responded with the kind of in-your-face bravado that would…