six in the morning until eleven at night. Race to the top, lie down on your side, and let gravity do the rest. The dizzying rush lasts longer than most amusement park rides, the slope never breaks down, and the place is free. Eat your heart out, Six Flags. 6201 Hermann Park Dr., 713-524-5876. AV
53. Attend Mass at Mission Concepción, in San Antonio
Come, all ye who are heavy laden—whether with life’s travails or an insatiable interest in history—and you will find rest at Misión Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña. As the best preserved of the churches in the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, this eighteenth-century chapel is also arguably the most beautiful: The original walls, roof, and twin bell towers remain intact, as do many of the frescoes. A renovation project that began last fall has temporarily shuttered the building, but as soon as the replastering and repainting is completed (sometime this month), slip in at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning for Mass. The ancient carved stonework, the bilingual liturgy, the unrivaled acoustics that always make the choir sound bigger than it is, and the congregation’s members around you—who are almost all second-, third-, and fourth-generation parishioners—unmistakably evoke our Spanish colonial past. 807 Mission Rd., 210-534-8646. KR
54. Collect a Lightning Whelk on Matagorda Bay
Stop beachcombing for starfish and sand dollars and concentrate instead on sifting the sand for a lightning whelk. Named for the brown, lightninglike streaks running vertically down its side, the official state shell features a rare counterclockwise spiral with a left-handed opening. The mollusk is common enough in Gulf waters, but an abandoned shell can be an elusive souvenir. Your best bet? Matagorda Bay, near Palacios, whose relative lack of visitors increases your chances of spotting the perfect specimen. AV
55. Enter a Chili Cookoff
Do you turn up your nose at Frito pies bedecked with canned chili? Do you brag on the secret family recipe that’s been passed down for seven generations? Then quit boasting from the confines of your kitchen and put your bowl of red center stage. Thousands of chiliheads regularly celebrate our state dish by devoting hard-earned Saturday mornings to cookoffs, hoping for a coveted first-place trophy and the chance to earn enough points to qualify for one of the championship cookoffs in Terlingua. Contact your local chamber of commerce to find the closest competition, and start stewing up your magical mix of meat, red chiles, secret spices, and various other ingredients, which, I’m obligated to point out, cannot include beans. The major chili societies forbid the offending filler. AV
56. See the Dogwoods Bloom in Palestine
“If winter comes,” asks the poet, “can spring be far behind?” In the forests of East Texas, it is not the west wind of Shelley’s ode that heralds the turning of the seasons but the dazzling white blooms of the Cornus florida, commonly known as the flowering dogwood. The name of the tree, which can grow forty feet high, comes from a variety that originated in England, where its bark was used to help bathe mangy dogs. And the best place to see dogwoods in all their glory is Davey Dogwood Park, in Palestine, which has hosted the Dogwood Trails Festival every year since 1938 (held on the weekends of March 20, March 27, and April 3 this year). The park has more than five miles of roads where you can drive among the trees or walk on the trails. Yet a more, well, romantic option is to ride the Texas State Railroad, a journey through the forest from Palestine to Rusk and back. 210 N. Link, 903-723-3014. PB
57. Buy a First Edition in Archer City
Why hasn’t Archer City become the next Marfa? It has all the qualifications: It is perfectly located on the way to nowhere, a famous film was shot there, it has lots of quaint buildings downtown that nobody is using, and it has a patron saint in Larry McMurtry, who over the past 24 years has turned his quiet North Texas hometown into a magnet for a particular type of visitor. With more than 250,000 books, McMurtry’s bookstore, Booked Up, now fills four downtown buildings, making it one of the largest collections in the country. One recent arrival was a 1929 inscribed first edition of The XIT Ranch of Texas and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado , by the West Texas historian and antisocialist crusader J. Evetts Haley. At $1,500, it’s still cheaper than most of the art for sale in Marfa, and you can look at it and tell right off the bat what it means. 216 S. Center, 940-574-2511. NB
58. Stop for Kolaches at the Czech Stop, in West
Remember these coordinates: fifteen miles north of Waco, exit 353, east side of Interstate 35. It’s there that you’ll find a modest Shell gas station that happens to be one of the most frequented pit stops in the state. Road-trippers in the know jockey for spaces in the parking lot (and the overflow lot across the street) to wait in line for the kolaches made daily at the bakery inside. The yeasty rolls, which come sweet (fruit and cream cheese) and savory (sausage and cheese), are served right from the oven. As a friendly employee stuffs a box with your requests—a couple of the švestkové (prune), a handful of the trešnové (cherry), a few of the broskvy (peach), throw in a jablkové (apple)—take a moment to silently thank the Czech and German immigrants who began settling (and baking) here more than one hundred years ago. Bolstered by the smell of sweet dough filling your car, you can veer back into the slipstream of maniac drivers on I-35 knowing that happiness is a warm kolache. 105 N. College , 254-826-5316 . JB
59. Read the First Chapter of Los de Abajo at the Pablo Baray Apartments, in El Paso
Mariano Azuela’s Los de Abajo (loosely translated as “The