44. Texas
Hoo boy, I feel like I could make a lot of people mad if they see this one. Don’t tell Hank Hill, please! This is possibly my most controversial placements in the whole list, but I request you to hear me out.
I have been to Texas three separate times and my visits ranged from fine to kinda awful. The three regions of the state I have been to are the northern panhandle, the southern coast, and Dallas.
I’ll start with Dallas. The Dallas metro area has this sprawl problem unlike anywhere in the US I’ve ever visited other than maybe Phoenix. The entire region is nearly 70 miles long of mostly suburbs, and the actual neat Downtown Dallas makes up such a small part of it all. Once you go outside of its bounds there is just so little life that the metro area can keep expanding with massive houses and land plots and no walkability. And Houston, Austin, and San Antonio all have similar problems. The interstates cut up all the cities, wrecked the mostly black and brown communities, and disrupted the cool culture many of these cities had. Texas is not unique in this (I know this from my home, St. Louis), but Dallas and also Houston exemplify the worst of it.
What’s up with this weird eyeball thing in Downtown Dallas?
Next I’ll talk about the Southern Coast. As I mentioned before in my Alabama ranking, the states on the Gulf of Mexico have some truly incredible beaches. I wish the water color was a little better, but I digress. The Texas beaches truly don’t match up to what even Florida offers. There’s a reason most people take vacations to Florida beaches instead. Texas weather isn’t as good, the beaches aren’t near as clean and calm, and it still gets a ton of hurricanes. When I visited Galveston it was 45, windy, rainy, and there was a dead dolphin on our beach that rotted away over the course of our 7 day stay. Maybe this was our fault for visiting in December, but the same latitude in Florida and Alabama was delightful at the same time of year.
Lastly, we come to the panhandle, which I had the “honor” of visiting on my March southwest trip. I was in awe of how the moment we left New Mexico it became a sea of brown plains that then somehow went away the moment we got into Oklahoma. Yes, I can honestly say that Oklahoma was the most enjoyable part of driving that day. “Ooh boy, Amarillo, my favorite place on earth!” said not a single soul. With all the feedlots, I had to hold my breath most of the drive through the state. I had a sense of disgust I haven’t felt about anywhere I’ve ever been.
But it isn’t last place now, is it? Texas has the food going for it. Classic, Texas Barbecue! I wouldn’t say it’s worth the feedlots and making a whole part of the state unvisitable, but maybe Amarillo is a place we can sacrifice. Also I don’t know if it’s a positive as much as interesting, but Texas does have a kind of state pride unlike no other state. I do understand, as Texas was the only state that was its own country at one point, but it’s still just Texas. You guys aren’t that special. But I have to give the fact that people do truly love their home state that much a little credit.
Texas is like its greatest creation, the Buc-ee’s. It’s monstrous, way too big for no reason, and kinda is a showcase of the problems with our American society, but you have to respect the gall of its existence.
