Texas is a big state. Really big. I had been warned, by several people in fact, that it would seem like Texas goes on forever when driving across it. I think on our coast to coast journey we will probably cover close to 4000 miles. And twenty percent of those miles would be covered in the great state of Texas.

Our first port of call was the city of Houston. To break up our long drive from New Orleans, we called in for some sustenance from the Louisiana original Popeye’s fried chicken. While eating lunch we noticed signs for the nearby Gator Chateau, and decided to check out their invitation to hold a baby gator, post lunch of course. Turns out, that invitation was correct. This place exists with the sole purpose of educating people on the American alligator, and best of all, they have a tank full of cute baby gators who don’t mind getting manhandled in the hope of convincing people that these much maligned reptiles aren’t all bad. The straps holding their razor teeth lined jaws shut seems to immediately suggest otherwise. These baby gator mouth straps are, however, (apparently) completely unnecessary. They only started using them a few months ago, and only because their insurance company insisted on it. But in all the years that they operated here before being forced to use the mouth straps, nobody has ever been bitten. Just another example of bureaucracy trumping common sense I guess.

After getting our fill of the surprisingly cuddly reptiles, we continued on to Houston. This is the biggest city in Texas, and actually the fourth biggest city in the whole United States. But we weren’t here to explore the metropolitan delights of downtown Houston. We were here for one reason, and one reason only. “Houston, we have a problem!” Yep, this is home to NASA Mission Control.

The Johnson Space Centre houses 100 buildings on a sprawling 1600 acre site, and is the epicentre of American manned space flight. This is the NASA facility where all astronauts are trained, and it has provided flight control for every single manned NASA mission since 1965. Ok sure, when we think of NASA facilities in America, the first name that always springs to mind is Cape Canaveral, and the Kennedy Space Centre, and for good reason. I guess KSC is the rockstar of NASA bases because that’s where the rockets actually get launched from. It’s the gateway to the stars. But a few seconds after the rockets are launched, Houston assumes control for the duration of the mission. So I guess that makes Houston the tour manager to Florida’s rockstar? Anyway, apparently the rockets are launched from Florida as it is closer to the equator, and are launched eastwards over Texas, or down range, to take advantage of the earths natural rotation to gain altitude more efficiently. Very clever.

Effectively, the visitor centres at both facilities are very similar. They both house excellent museums full of educational displays and artefacts to enjoy. They also both have an impressive Saturn V rocket on display. This 110m long marvel of engineering is an incredible object to see up close, as you get a real sense of the sheer scale of these things and what an amazing feat it is to simply build them, let alone launch them into outer space.

At Houston, you also get to see inside the real astronaut training facility from a darkened gallery walkway. Unfortunately there were no real astronauts in training during our visit, but it was interesting to see their workstations and current projects strewn messily on the benches. The hangar also houses many life size mock ups of the International Space Station in which to practice astronauting (that’s the correct word, right?).

The main attraction at this facility though has to be the iconic and historic Mission Control room housed upstairs in the Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Centre. As we were shuffled quietly up a brutalist concrete staircase in this rather nondescript, grey obelisk, we were strongly advised to keep our voices to a minimum. This was because we were passing the doors of the current Mission Control, who were actively communicating with the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. At the top of the stairwell we were ushered into a dimly lit viewing gallery, and invited to sink into the vintage red velvet cinema-style seats, complete with 1960s ashtrays. In front of us was the perfectly preserved, and instantly recognisable, Mission Control room which heard Neil Armstrong utter those famous words all the way back on July 20th 1969. As the family and friends of the astronauts sat in the very seats we currently occupied 54 years ago, they watched those three intrepid explorers conquer lunar exploration for the first time in human history. We were shown a mock-up of the minutes leading up to that moment as the vintage screens lit up with the same hand drawn calculations and data the technicians saw on that day all those years ago. We listened to the recording of the communication between the astronauts and Mission Control as they landed on the surface and departed the capsule.

It was a pretty humbling experience, to experience it almost as if we had been there, and was the real highlight of our day. We shuffled silently back down the staircase and boarded the tram for the ride back to the visitor centre, past the impressive space shuttle display. Time to head back for a bit of school and an early night to get some beauty sleep before our next marathon Texas drive in the morning.

Our next stop was San Antonio, 200 miles to our west. We arrived at our campsite in plenty of time to spend a few hours in the pool, and smash out a little more maths before a late night s’mores session around the fire pit. The next day we were off to Six Flags Fiesta theme park for a bit of a day off. We figured we had timed this one perfectly, as the local kids should all be in school on a Monday. But would you believe it, as we pulled up we were completely surrounded by huge, American yellow school buses. It would appear we had chosen the day that all the local seniors had their school outing! Never mind, it was still a quiet day in the park. But even the weather conspired to ruin our fun as well, as nearby lightning forced the park to close every single ride in the park for over an hour. 

When the rides finally opened up as the heavens cleared and the sun made an appearance, we had a great day, taking advantage of the short queues, and Bam’s recently acquired ability to reach the 48” ride height limit.

After a day of fun, we followed it up with a morning history lesson at San Antonio’s most famous monument, The Alamo. Like most people, I first came across the Alamo courtesy of John Wayne, who played the King of the wild frontier, Davy Crockett, in the 1960 western. I never really thought about it much as a kid, it was just a film. We weren’t taught any American history in school either, so my entire knowledge of this historic battle pretty much stems from Hollywood. In a nutshell, Texas used to be part of Mexico, and many Americans moved there to live as Mexicans. But when the Mexican government was taken over by the unpopular General Santa Anna, the Texians (as they were then known) did not like it and rebelled in declaration of Texan independence, seizing the Alamo Mission building in San Antonio. What followed was a desperate 13 day siege of the barricade, as the 200 Texians fended off the 1800 strong Mexican army. The end result was the total slaughter of all 200 men following a gruesome final battle. Even though the Texians lost at The Alamo, the brave sacrifice of those men galvanised the rest of Texas who eventually rallied and defeated Santa Anna at the battle of San Jacinto a few months later to the infamous battle cry “Remember the Alamo!”, thus securing independence for Texas.

The beautifully preserved church has now been engulfed by modern day San Antonio, but within its stone walls, the buildings and grounds remain a peaceful and poignant island of serenity to learn and remember. Peaceful, that is, except for the hordes of school kids on field trips who seem to have followed us here from Six Flags yesterday. I mean, seriously, do the kids ever actually go to school in Texas, or do they just get ferried from field trip to field trip in their giant, yellow taxis?

Time for another long drive, up and out of Texas. This time we stop for a night in the oil town of Big Spring to break up the 500 mile journey to our next destination in the neighbouring state of New Mexico. The roads here are unbelievable. I thought the Romans built long, straight roads, but Caesar had nothing on these Texans. Our route to New Mexico took us through hundreds of miles of endless, flat mirage-filled highways stretching far into the distance. The sprawling ranches concealing endless oil fields scarred with nodding donkeys and gas flares burning in the industrial oil refineries. Now we got a real sense of why the petrol is so cheap in this part of the world, they are literally pumping it out of their gardens. The cheapest price we have come across to date is a paltry $2.85 a gallon. At the current exchange rate, that means Texans are paying just 60p a litre to run their gas guzzling trucks. Good job really, considering our 7.2 litre RV only achieves about 12mpg!

Next stop, the original alien landing zone of Roswell…