May 2010
Features
Throw a canoe on the roof or a tube in the trunk and head for the Llano, the Brazos, the Pecos, the Trinity, the Guadalupe, or any of the other rivers on this list of the twenty best trips to take on Texas waterways this summer.
As the peculiar case of a Fort Bend sheriff’s deputy and his bloodhounds makes clear, the techniques of crime-scene investigation are not as infallible as the TV shows would have us believe. How a misplaced faith in some forensic experts is putting innocent people behind bars.
Our quiz shouldn’t be hard, so long as you’ve been paying attention. You have been paying attention, right?
In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, Empire of the Summer Moon, special correspondent S. C. Gwynne re-creates in thrilling detail the bloody 1871 battle that marked the beginning of the end for the most fearsome tribe to ever ride the plains and its mysterious, magnificent chief, Quanah Parker.
He’s the greatest player in the world—maybe the greatest player ever— of a card game that fewer and fewer people know how to play. But Bob Hamman doesn’t care. He’s too busy probing my mind.
Fly-fishing on this waterway is one of the best ways to surrender to the rugged and beautiful Hill Country.
Watch out for sunken logs and fallen trees, which rest in the river like sleeping monsters in tangle of smaller deadwood.
Pass through the thick piney woods of Memorial Park, and you'll find yourself worlds away from the nearby crowded freeways and malls of Houston.
This stretch of the waterway is both safe and exciting, a great place to introduce kids to Texas rivers.
This river is usually too dry to be much good for floating, but it supports a host of other sports.
The lush woodlands along the river support a large variety of bird-life, including herons, hawks, and kingfishers.
Wide and slow, the river is lined with familiar bottomland hardwood trees like sycamore, cherrybark oak, and the pretty but invasive chinaberry.
Grass tussocks cover the frequent sandbanks, and behind them steep, thickly-wooded slopes complete the air of rustic isolation.
Roughly three miles from Junction as the crow files, the river veers across the valley floor and through pecan-forested bottomlands.
If you're looking for a nice out-of-the-way Hill Country spot to cool off in, this gem, twenty minutes from the site of the Kerrville Folk Festival, is your answer.
Whether you want to swim, kayak, fly-fish, or simply be part of the joyful throngs of tubers who crowd the river in the summertime, the Guadalupe is the place.
This river seems to have a little bit of everything—juniper trees reminiscent of the Hill Country, tall pine trees as in East Texas, and the dense hardwood bottoms one would expect to find in these parts.
A trip down this waterway is one of the last real adventures you can have in this state.
The Neches's only natural waterfalls, Rocky Shoals, can be a mere two feet high in low-water conditions.
Tourists and natives mingle along its tree-lined concrete walkways far below the fantastical jumble of the downtown skyline.
Aquarena Springs, which has never gone dry, not even during the worst drought, has been the cradle of life in Central Texas for eons.
Impounded, channelized, and pumped dry, the river gives up the ghost in the desert at Fort Quitman and is resuscitated at Presidio by the Rio Conchos.
Next time there's a big rainstorm, go online and check the water flow at Wimberley. If it's over 250 cubic feet per second, call in sick and head for the Hill Country.
You might be tempted to dismiss this waterway as the Pecos lite, but the Devils packs a bigger punch into less than one hundred miles.
Columns
The debut of Enron, the play, on Broadway might be the perfect time to settle a question that’s been bothering Houston: Does Jeff Skilling need a new trial?
The strange case of Mauricio Celis, the Corpus Christi lawyer who was not a lawyer.
One year into his first term as mayor of San Antonio, Julián Castro is emerging as perhaps the most prominent young Hispanic politician in Texas. Get ready to get used to him.
Dance hall guilt, faded accents, SUVs with “Truck” plates, and the ancient initiation ceremony at which a young Texan male is presented with his first firearm.
Reporter
Narrow your focus to these two blocks of the city’s famed shopping stretch.
