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The Texanist|
August 15, 2013

On the Great Outdoors

Q. I am an avid South Texas hunter. A while back, I was en route to Concan and stopped to get gas when I saw a group of grown men shamelessly flaunting their pink camouflage hats and shirts. In almost three decades of hunting I have never seen a pink

By Texas Monthly Staff and David Courtney

Travel & Outdoors|
June 5, 2013

Miles and Miles of Texas

The Hill Country Drive, the BBQ Market Drive, the Backwoods Drive, and thirteen other summer trips, from the mountains to the coast, that will take you down some of the prettiest, most picturesque, most wide-open stretches of asphalt Texas has to offer. Buckle up!

By Francesca Mari and Texas Monthly

Sand dunes at Boca Chica beach.
Travel & Outdoors|
May 8, 2013

15 Best Spots on the Coast

From Boca Chica to Sabine Lake, the Texas coast is still home to pristine, natural, secluded spots where you can while away the summer far from the madding crowds. Come along as we explore the hidden beaches, bays, and trails that you always knew were out there.

By

The Wanderer|
January 30, 2013

Calling All Weekend Wanderers

In Texas Monthly’s inaugural issue (forty years ago this month, in February 1973), writer Richard West exhorted “weekend wanderers” to pack up and embrace the three-day vacation. “With a little imagination, planning, and a basic Texas road map,” he wrote, “a very real quality of leisure and

By jordanbreal and Jordan Breal

Travel & Outdoors|
January 21, 2013

Into the Wild

Out of more than half a million acres of state parks and natural areas, we’ve chosen the ten best trips—where to camp, what to do, and what to look for when you head to the nearest town

By

Feature|
January 20, 2013

Writing Life

The long, slow, quiet, thoughtful, weird, brilliant, often-interrupted, never-compromised career of John Graves, who died July 30, 2013.

By

Feature|
January 20, 2013

Dirt and Light

James H. Evans has been photographing Big Bend for twenty years. But never before has it looked so, well, big.

By

Sports|
January 20, 2013

How to Dove Hunt

The SeasonFor many hunters, Labor Day weekend is synonymous with the soft coos of the mourning dove. Every year, roughly 350,000 people in Texas are seduced by this avian siren song and harvest about five million of the four-ounce birds—that’s about 30 percent of the total number shot in the

By

The Culture|
January 20, 2013

How to Shoot a .22

Rites of passage dot the path to becoming a true Texan—riding a horse, having your picture taken with Big Tex—but few are as iconic as learning to fire a rifle. Although there are a variety of types, beginners often train with a .22-caliber. “That’s because there’s minimal recoil, and the

By

Travel & Outdoors|
January 20, 2013

Marfa Best Western

In Donald Judd’s last interview before his death, in 1994, the artist explained that he’d first come to Marfa two decades earlier because he “just wanted a place in the Southwest for the summertime.” Whether he intended it or not, this far West Texas town has since become the

By

The Culture|
January 20, 2013

The Old Country

I've become a sort of pessimistic accepter of the changes that have beset the Hill Country in recent years, unacceptable though many of them may be. But I'm grateful for having experienced the hills earlier, when change was slight—and grateful too for corners and stretches still untouched.

By

The Culture|
January 20, 2013

How to Tie a Texas Rig

Modern-day bass fishing owes its enormous popularity to two game-changing events. First, in 1949, Nick Creme rocked the angler community with the creation of the plastic bait worm. Roughly ten years later a fisherman on Lake Tyler, weary of snagging his hooks on submerged timber and vegetation, speared a plastic

By

The southeast edge of the South Rim, in the Chisos Mountains.
Travel & Outdoors|
January 20, 2013

Climb Every Mountain

Whether you want to ride a horse, bomb down a mountain-bike trail, hike up a hill, relax in a hot springs, scale the face of a giant granite boulder, or just sit on your tailgate and look at a pretty sunset, there’s a lot to do on and around the

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Feature|
January 20, 2013

. . . And the Rest

Pajarito Mountain If you really want to get away from the crowds, scoot over to Los Alamos, thirty miles west of Santa Fe. The nearby Pajarito ski area is almost as top secret as the town was when the Manhattan Project begat the atomic bomb there in the forties. Four

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Travel & Outdoors|
January 20, 2013

Field Trip

Besides books and my own mistakes, I’ve learned almost everything I know about wildflowers from volunteering at the National Wildflower Research Center, Lady Bird Johnson’s visionary gift to Texas. Perhaps my inexperience was evident on my application, because the volunteer coordinator wisely placed me where I couldn’t do much harm,

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Travel & Outdoors|
January 20, 2013

Six Simple Steps to Meadowhood.

1Find Yourself Texas has a range of soils and climates. To know what to plant, you have to know where you are among its ten vegetational regions.2Flower Plot Pick a sunny, well-drained site for your meadow. When choosing which flowers to plant, think about bloom times, size, and color.3Go

By

Travel & Outdoors|
January 20, 2013

Lady Bird’s Place

During the infamous drought of 1996, roadside wildflowers frizzled and fried. But at the National Wildflower Research Center, just southwest of Austin, blossoms, shrubs, trees, and grasses were sleek and sassy. Why? Because 1995’s rains watered 1996’s flowers, thanks to the largest rooftop rainwater-collection system in North America. One of

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texas survival kit
Feature|
January 20, 2013

A Texas Survival Kit

What to do if you're bitten by fire ants, lost in the wilderness, sprayed by a skunk, attacked by a shark, stuck in a lightning storm, swept away by a riptide, or caught in any of eleven other worst-case scenarios.

By

Travel & Outdoors|
January 20, 2013

Shore ’Nuff

The best beaches in Texas for—among other summertime pursuits—shelling, strolling, birding, fishing, treasure hunting, turtle herding, solitude, and surfing, dude.

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The Culture|
March 31, 2012

Rick  Reichenbach, Lighthouse Keeper

Reichenbach is the caretaker for the Aransas Pass Light Station. Built in 1855 to mark entry into Corpus Christi Bay, the now privately maintained lighthouse—which is on the National Register of Historic Places and is owned today by H-E-B CEO Charles Butt—is the only manned lighthouse in operation on the

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