Comments | amw: Hawkins → Lake Jacksonville → Lufkin

amw

Hawkins → Lake Jacksonville → Lufkin

Oct 24, 2021 19:15

I am back in a KOA, just off the highway outside of Lufkin. I originally wanted to go to Nacogdoches because a) it has a fun name to say, and b) it's the only town i know in East Texas, primarily due to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, but i couldn't find a campsite. I think i have just about given up on finding any cheap campsites in this part ( Read more... )

travel, bike, american dream

Comments 16

meowmensteen October 25 2021, 00:39:28 UTC

It really it a big and diverse state in the sense that different people can go to different places and have totally different experiences. My co-worker recently went to south Huston and hers was so different than mine vising grandpa in College Station. I got the friendly college town southern hospitality. She remembers just highways everywhere and ghettos where you don't get out of your car, and don't make eye contact with people and just talking to the wrong person could get you shot.

jenndolari October 25 2021, 07:09:39 UTC

That certainly is the South Houston I know. College Station and South Houston are night-and-day college towns.

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amw October 25 2021, 13:06:10 UTC

Ugh, dry counties, i forgot about that. It's not even that i particularly want or need to get drunk, i just enjoy stopping into small town bars because they usually have alright food, maybe someone to talk to... at least you can get a feel for the culture of the place. But when there's no bar, where do people hang out? All the donut shops are drive-thru. The Mexican restaurants are never busy. Church, i guess?

jenndolari October 25 2021, 17:03:33 UTC

Oddly, the VFW lodges are very bar-like and are usually open to the public for lunch. I don't know about drinks, but you can get a good lunch there and meet interesting people.

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dadi October 25 2021, 03:57:00 UTC

It does make sense, for those who understand...

Texas really sounds....dystopic?

amw October 25 2021, 13:03:35 UTC

This part of Texas certainly is. It's not as poverty-stricken as parts of Eastern or Southern Europe, or places in Africa and around the rest of the Global South... but it's definitely noticeably more antagonistic and unpleasant than anywhere i have traveled in the US to date (including other parts of Texas). I worry that the whole "south" is going to be like this (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama), but i will be taking a bit of a "cheat" route through Mississippi and Alabama at least, because it looks like i'll be close to the coast, which makes the states very small.

king_of_apathy October 25 2021, 04:45:51 UTC

Just checked google maps. After cycling most of the length of canada you've now done nearly all of the usa from north to south. Impressive!
My trans America trip was mostly by greyhound bus, so i think i had the opposite experience from you. It was all city centres, with Dallas and Houston being my Texas stops. And being in the city i ended up staying with much more liberal people.
I just googled coal rolling and wow, how the hell is that even a real thing!

Remembering those dogs in Taiwan too...

amw October 25 2021, 13:01:08 UTC

Yep, that's exactly how i've traveled the US in the past too. You might have a few sketchy experiences around the Greyhound terminal, and if you get out at one of the random stops beside a gas station in the middle of nowhere you can see a bit of the rural culture, but it's so different to actually travel through it... and be forced to stop along the way because the distance between major cities on a bike is measured in days, not hours.