Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2025 i Texas Highways Magazine

AMONG THE BLOOMING wildflowers and flittering monarchs at the National Butterfly Center in Mission, you’ll find Spike. The 22-year-old African spurred tortoise arrived at the center in 2013 after living with a Mission family as an exotic pet. Then in 2020, his enclosure at the center mysteriously caught on fire, leaving Spike with a burned shell (he’s in the process of receiving a prosthetic one). But Spike is a resilient fellow. Today, he roams the grounds, welcoming visitors, chomping on vegetables, and hosting his annual birthday party on Dec. 14. He’s an unexpected sight for travelers looking to experience the Rio Grande Valley’s prolific butterfly migration, but he leaves a lasting impression. A bench on the side of his space reads, “One day I will learn to fly—Spike.” And if…

CRYSTAL CHANDELIERS HANG from the ceiling and red LED lights illuminate the walls as two of the state’s best video game players sit on a stage, controllers in hand, their eyes fixed on a large monitor, backs turned to a raucous audience. Camera operators within the vast ballroom of Houston’s Royal Sonesta hotel focus on two players: Au’Juan Porter, 27, who is known by his gaming handle, Trojan, and Joe Olveda, 25, aka JoeCrush. The gamers’ facial expressions are broadcast onto a movie theater sized screen, and to thousands of viewers on the popular gaming livestream service Twitch. The Texas Showdown, established in 2001, is the oldest and largest video game competition in the state. Over three days in the spring, the event draws more than 1,500 competitors and spectators from…

BIG BEND COUNTRY ALPINE/FORT DAVIS Dark Skies Celebration and Festival April 21-26 For International Dark Sky Week, Alpine, Fort Davis, and surrounding communities host family activities, presentations, tours, and star parties. Events are held at McDonald Observatory and various spots in each town. mcdonaldobservatory.org; visitalpinetx.com DEL RIO George Paul Memorial Xtreme Bull Riding April 25-26 Bull riders and fighters battle 1,500-pound beasts and the clock at this annual event named in honor of the late world champion from Del Rio. Val Verde County Fairgrounds, 2006 N. Main St. 830-775-9595; georgepaulmemorialbullriding.com FORT STOCKTON Big Bend Open Road Race April 23-26 The most challenging openroad race in the country has drivers compete by traversing the 118-mile loop from Fort Stockton to Sanderson and back. Festivities include a car show and parade. Fort…

Springs Eternal IF THERE’S ONE THING we know at Texas Highways, it’s that Texans love their wildflowers. Our Online Wildflower Field Guide stays among our top-viewed stories most of the year, whether it’s the dead of winter or the height of summer. While spring months are of course the best time to view wildflowers, blossoms can still be found in pockets across the state nearly year-round. For our cover story, photographer Sean Fitzgerald spent many years capturing blooms through every season to bring you a month-by-month guide of where and when to enjoy our native flowers. As always, you can find a bounty of archival wildflower content on our site at texashighways.com/wildflowers. While you’re there, make sure to check out our newest email newsletter offerings. In February, we debuted our…

YOU’D BE FORGIVEN for feeling a little envious of the vast fields of blooms that blanket the state with color each spring. But if you’ve got a barren plot of land, don’t fret—you can craft your own wildflower patch with help from Native American Seed. Founded in Argyle, the company has collected and preserved seeds native to Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma for 35 years. Their seed mixes offer drought-resistant landscaping, from native grass packs, featuring curly mesquite and buffalograss, to wildflower field packets, showcasing bounties of American basketflower, Mexican hat, and Texas bluebonnet. The Lady Bird’s Legacy Mix honors the former first lady’s dedication to roadside beautification with native flowers like firewheel. Pick up a packet of seeds on your next visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, at the…

Texas Showdown The 2025 tournament takes place March 28-30 at the Hilton Houston Post Oak by the Galleria. txshowdown.com National Video Game Museum This museum in Frisco showcases the history and culture of video games, featuring interactive exhibits and educational programs. nvmusa.org DreamHack Dallas The May 23-25 festival hosts events ranging from tournaments to cosplay competitions and is recognized by Guinness World Records for its fast internet speeds. dreamhack.com Cidercade With locations in Arlington, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston, Cidercade offers hundreds of retro and modern arcade games. cidercade.com Classic Game Fest The biggest retro video game convention in Texas and one of the top retro video game conventions in the country takes place July 25-27. classicgamefest.com…

BEFORE A WEEKNIGHT SHOWING of the obscure 1995 Todd Haynes film, Safe, Hyperreal Film Club cofounder Jenni Kaye invites a round of applause for the volunteers running the 60-seat screening space in East Austin. After almost a decade of hosting movie parties around the capital city, Kaye’s cinema pop-up opened a permanent clubhouse on Chicon Street last September. A rotating cast of some 40 cinephiles help pop popcorn and host four features each week, often paired with locally made short films. “It’s almost 100% volunteer run, and that’s critical to the type of experience we want to create,” says David McMichael, who founded the group with Kaye and Tanner Hadfield. “It’s less a business and more like a giant community art project.” The nonprofit’s new headquarters arrives at a fruitful…

TO SAY GEORGETOWN IS FOND of red poppies is an understatement. The town square is blooming with the flowers everywhere you look—from public art, to bike racks and benches, to storefront window displays. The obsession started when Henry “Okra” Purl Compton, an Army corporal stationed in France during World War I, gave his mother seeds he gathered from red poppy fields in Belgium. She planted them in her garden and then blooms started sprouting all over town. In 1990, when local groups banded together to plant 100 million seeds, the Texas State Legislature designated Georgetown “The Red Poppy Capital of Texas.” Named after early settler George Washington Glasscock in 1848, the town 30 miles north of Austin has dozens of businesses situated on the square itself. The downtown contains many…

ARNIE SEGOVIA LIKES TO JOKE that he wasn’t born in Texas, but he crawled here as fast as he could. The avuncular man with the push broom mustache, whose cherubic face belies his 62 years, has amassed 1 million YouTube subscribers and more than 600,000 Instagram followers with his cheerful and plainspoken videos detailing how to prepare the food of his native Rio Grande Valley. The Segovia family moved to Texas from Arizona when Arnie was 1, staying in Pecos for a decade before moving to Edinburg. Segovia grew up surrounded by the home cooking of his mother and Mexican grandmothers, as well as his father and the farm and ranch hands of Pecos, who regularly cooked whole animals for community celebrations. In the late 1990s, Segovia and his colleagues…

Every year, the turning seasons summon fresh colors from the native grasslands and prairies of Texas. The showy buds of spring—bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush—are the most famous. But the state’s prairies provide blooms year-round, in colors both overwhelmingly vast and intimately lovely. These blooms are the charismatic stars of the native prairie, says photographer Sean Fitzgerald. “There is a flow of wildflowers through the year that’s a gentle progression of colors, shapes, and textures,” he says. There’s the spring flowering of blues, reds, and purples, and the rich butter and golden yellows of summer plants—including various shades of green in the grasses. Smaller, subtler flowers emerge in winter. For years, Fitzgerald has crossed the state documenting its diversity of flowering plants and their connections to the landscape. Last May, he…

WHEN STAFF MEMBERS of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum were piecing together a recent exhibition on the former president’s favorite painter, they came across a picture from the 1951 holiday season in the family archives. Framed by a striped sofa chair and a scraggly Christmas tree decked with sparkly garland, Lyndon B. Johnson and his family crowded in the den of their ranch house for a photo op. Hanging over the fireplace behind them was a painting by Porfirio Salinas of a prickly pear cactus in springtime bloom with the Hill Country stretched out in the background. The painting, a gift from a family friend, was the first the family owned from the Texas landscape painter. It marked the start of a bond between the Johnsons and Salinas rooted…