Two things Texas has plenty of are roads and land. It’s the perfect place for a little U.S. getaway road trip.

We rented our car from Dollar at the airport.

Choosing the “mystery car” saved us $500.00 on the rental. We got a small Nissan and then they upgraded us for free to Nissan Sentra.

They asked if we wanted to pay for the upgrade. We said no. Then they just gave it to us when we walked out to the car port (typical). They also offered the toll pass for $13/day. We said no. And we did not have to pay a single toll. It’s VERY EASY to avoid tolls and adds no time to your trip. This was our experience anyway.

Road safety in Texas

Texas drivers are…well, let’s just say Texas has the highest count for road fatalities in the U.S. And we can see why. Simply be prepared for fast driving, combined with following distances that will make you shit your pants, a serious lack of blinkers, and terrible road work signage.

It’s not ONE THING – it’s the whole picture. And not all Texas drivers are bad. But in the three weeks we spent there, we determined that we’d rather be back on the chaotic roads of Vietnam. Come to Texas, do a road trip, but be prepared for someone to enter the freeway, cross four lanes of traffic at 80mph without using their blinker…okay? (we saw this happen on more than one occasion).

Your Route

Texas is a large State. You are welcome to create your own path so I’ll give you some location options, and you can piece it together how you please.

Our route was pretty central, and easy:

Fly into Dallas (pick up rental car, stay in Dallas one night).

Drive to Austin (6 full days) – you can do A LOT of day trips from Austin (natural waterfalls, wineries, smaller towns etc).

From Austin drive to San Antonio (4 full days) – you can do a day trip to Fredericksburg + Enchanted Rock or actually stay in Fredericksburg for a night or two.

Head back to Austin (2 days) – we did this in order to make our way back up to Dallas. But we originally planned to drive from San Antonio down to Corpus Cristi (southern little beach town) for two days.

If you drove down to Corpus Cristi, you could hit the coast, drive to Houston, and then make your way back to Dallas.

Drive to Dallas (4 full days) – You could do some longer day trips from Dallas, but Dallas for us was more of a chill spot with less “adventuring.”

Other locations/directions you could tack on:

• To the East you have Caddo Lake, Texas
• To the West you have Duro Canyon (north) and The Big Bend (south) as well as Marfa, Texas.

These are all worth seeing from what we hear. But we decided to stay central for this road trip, and move slow. You could certainly pack A LOT more into your route than we did.

If you’re looking for a single state road trip in the U.S. don’t sleep on ol’ Texas.

Interested in road tripping around Texas? Then pin this post for later!

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