blackbirds or maybe some zebra butterflies. For a change of pace, from there I headed eleven miles east to a WBC site in McAllen called Quinta Mazatlan, a lovely Mexican colonial–style house encircled with walking paths and well-kept lawns. There I was startled by a whole flock of chachalacas, big, goofy brown birds that sound like a cross between a turkey and a donkey.

At Estero Llano Grande State Park, in Weslaco, another WBC site, a ranger informed me that it is the best place in the Valley to see paur
aques (“par- ah-keys”). You’ll need keen eyes, though, because these astonishingly camouflaged relatives of nighthawks look exactly like a pile of dead leaves. After a stroll, relax on one of the park’s decks overlooking a tranquil pond and let the world fly or paddle by. During the Big Sit birding event last year, an astounding 99 species were spotted in 24 hours.

Rested up, get in your car and continue east on U.S. 83 before turning onto Texas Highway 100. The road rolls toward warm sea breezes and the South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center, a WBC site where you can see dapper gray-and-white laughing gulls and ponderous brown pelicans sail over the water. Finish your Valley excursion by going north via Park Road 100 as the Gulf of Mexico spreads out before you. When you reach the numbered beach roads on the right, park, take off your shoes, and go scrunch your toes in the sand. Give the horizon your best thousand-mile stare and enjoy the salt air and solitude at the very 
tip of Texas.

The 
Wildflower
Drive
Every Texan has his or her favorite stretch of road for seeing wildflowers each spring. Might we suggest one of our own, where bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and countless other varieties rule the Hill Country for a short but glorious time each year?
START: Brady
END: Llano
DIRECTIONS: East on Texas Highway 71
DISTANCE: 54 miles

The Music Drive

By Joe Nick Patoski

ROUTE: Turkey to Lubbock 
(the long way)
DISTANCE: 366 miles
NUMBER OF COUNTIES: 13
WHAT TO LISTEN TO: Buddy Holly’s That’ll Be the Day and 
Waylon Jennings’s Ol’ Waylon

West Texas is the Texas of wide-open spaces, but it is also the Texas of music giants, starting in the Rolling Plains in the heart of red-dirt ranching country, not far from the 6666 and the Matador. The landscape is sparsely populated and visually powerful, and the sky is so big that only the most creative imagination can fill up the canvas. That was the case with James Robert Wills, who came from a farming family near Turkey and went on to become the King of Western Swing. That point is driven home at the Bob Wills Museum at the old Turkey grade school, where his life is recounted in phases through storyboards, photographs, and album covers.

Heading north from Turkey, drive 88 miles on Texas Highway 70 to Pampa, crossing undulating grasslands and passing over eastern extensions of Palo Duro Canyon. In downtown Pampa the old Harris Drug Store, where Woody Guthrie worked as a teenager and first learned guitar, is now the Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center. Guthrie’s story is told through photographs, letters, and news clips, and his legacy as the greatest folk singer in American history is celebrated with live jams twice a month. In July the center will celebrate Woody’s one hundredth birthday. About a mile west is the 150-foot-long “This Land Is Your Land” music-note fence.

From Pampa, it’s 55 miles to Amarillo on U.S. 60, then 18 miles south on Interstate 27 to Canyon. Though the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum does not yet have 
a permanent exhibit on 
West Texas music (hint, hint), if you call in advance, you can arrange to see Bob Wills’s fiddle.

Now you have entered the pancake-flat Llano Estacado, where windmills and grain elevators dominate the horizon. It’s a straight shot for 88 miles on U.S. 60 to Clovis, New Mexico, home of Norman Petty Recording Studios. Kenneth Broad and his wife, Shirley, lead tours of the studio where Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Buddy Knox and the Rhythm Orchids, and a slew of other bands recorded hits in the late fifties and early sixties. If you get the fever, pick up some taquitos and burgers from the Foxy Drive-In, like Buddy and the boys used to do, and stroll through the new Norman and Vi Petty Rock and Roll Museum, with floor-to-ceiling exhibits filled with artifacts from the Pettys and the Texas musicians they worked with.

Pick up U.S. 84 heading southeast, and you’ll pass a string of farming communities and a billboard that identifies Littlefield as the home of Waylon Jennings. Follow Waylon Jennings Boulevard (FM 54) into town to Hall Avenue, where you’ll find the most unusual music museum in West Texas, inside Waymore’s Liquor Store. Run by members of Waylon’s family, it features his first guitar, his handwritten backstage pass for his parents, and assorted memorabilia. But the best 
part of the collection is James Jennings, who will gladly tell you vivid stories that bring his older sibling back to life.

Continue on U.S. 84 for 36 more miles until you roll into Lubbock, the home of Buddy Holly and the Crickets (and the terrific Buddy Holly Center). Head east to 108 E. Broadway to see a statue of C. B. Stubblefield, which marks the spot of his original barbecue joint, where Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore polished their musical chops. Then turn right on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and left on E. Thirty-first, where you’ll find the City of Lubbock Cemetery. Holly’s gravesite is plainly marked, and tradition calls for you to leave a guitar pick on his headstone. Don’t let tradition down.

The Canyon Drive
We’re not jealous that a certain canyon two states to the west gets all the fanfare, but the uninitiated should see the majesty of Caprock Canyons and Palo Duro Canyon.
START: North