My dad's return to Texas, for an epic road trip with me in tow

Times

21 hours ago

As a young boy, my dad spent a year in the most rootin' tootin' American state. His father, a tweed-elbowed geography professor, was on sabbatical at the University of Texas and had moved his family to Austin while he taught students with perfect teeth which way up to hold a map.
That period on the other side of the Atlantic proved formative. Back at home in Oxfordshire my dad would for decades reminisce about school bullies in cowboy boots, deep-fried food and, if the English weather ever got warm, the wall of dry heat he walked into after first touching down on Texan soil one August day in 1976.
Like any teenager, I had mostly ignored these anecdotes about a long-ago chapter of my parent's life. My knowledge of the Lone Star State was limited to sepia western films and Louis Sachar's novel Holes, in which badly behaved youths are forced to dig pits in the hard floor of the Chihuahuan desert. I'd been to the US before, on visits to both coasts, but until recently I was blissfully ignorant about the middle bit, happy to accept that it was all rattlesnakes, Stetson hats and balled-up armadillos. I found it difficult to imagine my fair-skinned, freckle-cheeked dad among the tumbleweeds of the Wild West.
The answer to my ignorance? And to Dad's perpetual pining? Hopping on a ten-hour direct flight to his former home town. From there we would recreate the road trips of his youth, with the dual aim of visiting the places he remembered, if they still existed, and finding newer, more happening hotspots. Discovery and rediscovery — that was the plan.
Our mission begins with a whistlestop tour of Dad's old haunts. First up is the single-storey clapboard house in which the Browning family once lived, nestled into the freshly mown suburb of Tarrytown. By some miracle it's the only property on the block that hasn't been renovated beyond recognition. We each raise an eyebrow at the vast size of the surrounding mansions. The Church of the Good Shepherd, which decades ago lured in godless kids by handing out glazed doughnuts, is still there, as is Dad's junior high school and Deep Eddy Pool, a buzzy local waterhole flanked with reams of green bunting, providing tired Texans brief respite from the sweltering 30C-plus climate. On our way back to our hotel, the achingly trendy San Jose (doubles from bunkhousehotels.com), Dad pulls over at H-E-B, a beloved Texan supermarket, and we buy York Peppermint Patties, his favourite childhood treat. The sun melts the dark chocolate coating onto our fingers.
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Other parts of Austin are new, unfamiliar to us both. Back in the 1970s the now thriving city was a quiet university town and, with the exception of the Capitol, the palatial home of the state government, had no buildings taller than the 94-metre clocktower. Then, in 2003, planning laws changed. A forest of skyscrapers sprouted, which at dusk light up in different colours. The neighbourhood south of the river, known as SoCo, became a hub for art, fashion and food. It's there that Dad has his tarot cards read by a lady who has pitched an ethereal gazebo in a parking space. I tuck into the best BLT I've ever tasted, from a stylish deli named Tiny Grocer (sandwiches from £9.50; tinygrocer.com). Later we take an hour-long boat tour manned by a guy who introduces himself as Captain Lenny, which culminates in a cloud of palm-sized Mexican bats swooping out from the Congress Bridge (tours from £10 per person; capitalcruises.com). I do my best not to roll my eyes as Dad elegantly performs his usual tip-transferring handshake.
The next morning, the pair of us clamber into the cherry red Buick we have rented and head west along Interstate 10, the same road that Dad and his family travelled along half a century before. Back then, my grandfather bought an ancient Ford Maverick from a wily dealer who promised that, despite its dilapidated appearance, the car was in good nick and had '460 air conditioning'. What he didn't disclose is that 460 simply meant four windows open at 60mph. This time around, Dad makes sure that all the fans are on full blast.
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Our second stop is Dripping Springs, a small but fast-growing roadside town that waits patiently for visitors, like us, who may stumble across it on their way out of the state capital. At Camp Lucy (doubles from £180; camplucy.com), the resort where we pause for the night, the owner welcomes us with open arms. His name is Whit Hanks and he looks like the younger, sportier brother of Father Christmas. We are thrilled to learn that not only did he go to the same junior school as Dad back in the Seventies, but he lived just around the corner. A neighbour! Plus, since Hanks has recently bought an old hotel in the small Wiltshire town of Malmesbury, we're equally pleased to discover that he has become partial to our quaint traditions. He offers us afternoon tea and we stuff ourselves silly with lavender scones and venison sausage rolls.
The following day, having waved farewell to Camp Lucy's adorable on-site alpacas, we embark on the most epic drive of our road trip: one hour to Fredericksburg, a Germanic town once thought to have the highest concentration of millionaires in Texas, and then five hours on to Alpine, along huge stretches of open highway. As we head further into the desert, Dad yelps in fond recognition of the vehicle carcasses and low shrubs that punctuate the landscape, although he insists there are fewer billboards than there once were. We stop for petrol in a place called Ozana, and I note that it is ceremoniously billed as 'The Biggest Little Town in the World'. Beyond the windscreen, everything is covered in brown dust, like a Twiglet.
Happily for Dad, a history buff, our subsequent stops are more momentous. In Alpine, we check into the Holland Hotel (thehollandhoteltexas.com), a Spanish colonial building kitted out in tan leather and dark wood. Well before dawn we are woken by the aggressive honks of an Amtrak train, which explains the earplugs we spotted (and mistakenly ignored) in the bathroom. We spend the next night in the airy Hotel Limpia (doubles from £94; hotellimpia.com), beside Fort Davis. After a late arrival, a man with a mightily impressive moustache informs us that we have only 30 minutes before the former military post closes, so we attempt to squeeze 200 years of history into half an hour. Then comes Marfa, an austere but peaceful place made famous by the minimalist artist Donald Judd and the large art foundation he set up there in the 1980s. It feels to me as though the town has been on the precipice of becoming cool for a few decades. I wonder what exactly would tip it into trendiness. Dad is more interested in the fact that it was home to an army airbase in the 1940s.
Our penultimate stop is my favourite: a great sprawling ranch covering 36,000 acres, named Cibolo Creek (cibolocreekranch.com), which is hidden among the eastern Chinati Mountains and more than half an hour's drive from the closest town. Dad and I trek across the hillside on horses named Rocky and Pork Chop, then swim slow lengths in the pool. In a remarkably Evelyn Waugh moment, I ask a handsome stranger where to find the towels and instead of answering with the Texan twang I've by this point grown used to, his reply arrives in a polite English accent. A former Sunday Times journalist! Also on holiday with his dad! Perhaps Texas isn't so alien, I think to myself.
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A day later, Dad and I repack our suitcases and set off on our last leg towards the Big Bend National Park via the eerie streets of Terlingua, once a booming mining settlement but now a ghost town peppered with deserted buildings and scruffy dogs.More specifically, we head on to Santa Elena Canyon, which quietly straddles the Rio Grande, marking the border between Mexico and the USA. We park among knee-high cactuses, pink and round like flying saucer sweets, and happily Dad begins to tell me about his first visit to this exact spot, how he and his older brother skimmed stones and wondered why, if a whole other country was really over the other side of the river (much deeper then), there was no fence.
Although half a century has passed since that last Browning excursion, I find myself wondering the same thing, equally impressed that a major international border is marked merely by a shallow stream. Weren't there plans to build a wall? Or does the harsh terrain serve the same purpose? I take off my shoes and wade towards Mexico, where I pause for a few minutes, taking in the colossal scale of the rock face from marginally warmer climes. Dad waves from the opposite bank. He gives me the same toothy grin that he's been grinning since he was 12 and living just down the road. Texas is pretty magnificent. I can see why he's wanted to bring me here for quite so long. Ceci Browning was a guest of Travel Texas (traveltexas.com) and America As You Like It, which has ten nights' room-only from £2,295pp, including flights, car hire, and two nights at the Hotel San Jose in Austin, Camp Lucy in Dripping Springs, the Holland Hotel in Alpine, the Cibolo Creek Ranch in Marfa and the Big Bend Holiday Hotel in Terlingua (americaasyoulikeit.com)