The western terminus of our three week road trip in April 2026 was Austin Texas. After a long leg from Hot Springs Arkanas, we made our way to Glen Rose Texas for a short break in the country. We found Skybox Cabins, intalling ourselves in a charming tiny cabin hovering at tree level, surrounded by silence.
The Skybox hosts bill Glen Rose as the “tip-top of Texas Hill Country”. Apparently, this claim caused some controversy , even in a state known for tall tales. Purists claim that Texas Hill Country, as opposed to a hilly part of Texas, is an area roughly between Austin and San Antonio, Dallas be damned, or in the words of one: “though limestone and cedar scrub were part of it, to me it was less strictly geographical and more emotional-slash-conceptual. People drinking beer and playing guitars under live oaks by clear streams was the Hill Country to me.”
The Skybox owners retort to the purists was along the lines of “hey we have limestone and cedar scrub too, along with distilleries and wineries, so yeah we count and why do you even care?”. The article notes that the owner is from France, and even though he came to Texas as a teenager and became a rodeo cowboy, he’s still an immigrant, so could not possibly understand the finer points of Texas geography.
To this New Yorker, Glen Rose was all the Texas Hill Country we needed. From our treetop cabin, we could see the sun rise over the fringed tops of the cedar trees from our balcony. The air is redolent with the scent of sagebrush and juniper.
Within the 50-acre property is a mile-long trail that scrambles over huge slabs of yellow-brown limestone, past a meandering arroyo, and through open fields in which we encountered a lone cow.
The Skybox hosts have created spots to rest with colorful hammocks, benches and a hand-hewn wooden chapel.
Something about these semi-arid landscapes have always spoken to me-the stark contrasts of twisted green and the yellows and ochres of soil and rock, where water appears as a sometimes fleeting treasure…or as a flood.
The town of Glen Rose, a few miles away, could be the setting for a Western movie. Dusty, brick, late 19th century buildings surround a shaded town square. There are five, almost identical gift shops, with a combination of ruffly women’s clothing and religious-themed home goods, a pie store, a sweets shop and a natural food store.
A few blocks away a former feed mill makes a pleasant place for lunch along the Brazos River. My husband and I shared a brisket quesadilla.
The man at the table next to us was feeding a baby kangaroo that he had in a sling on his lap. He was from Infinity Exotics Wildlife Preserve, near Meridian, which, according to its website, is where you go if you’re in the market for Sable, Kudu, Eastern Mountain Bongo, Dama Gazelle, Impala, Grevy’s Zebra, Addax and, apparently, kangaroo.
Just the northwest of Glen Rose is Dinosaur Valley State Park. It’s so named because of the fossilized three-toed theropod tracks in the Paluxy River, discovered when one George Ross was looking for a spot for his moonshine still.
The tracks are believed to have belonged to Arcocanthosaurus, a carnivore that walked on two legs. Later, an even more thrilling paleontological discovery were the most distinctive sauropod tracks discovered anywhere in the world, a discovery that lead to the naming of a new species of this herbivores, Sauroposeiden proteles.
Dinosaur Valley State Park spreads out from the Paluxy River, a green-hued water way that lazily flows through the park and seems to be as much of a reason to be there as the dinosaur tracks. A few visitors were wading in the water or relaxing on the banks. A short hiking trail takes you up a hill with expansive views of the Texas Hill Country (or hilly Texas country.)
Of course, no place named for dinosaurs, even a serious paleontological site, can escape dinosaur kitsch. Near the entrance of the park are two gigantic dinosaur statues: T Rex and Brontosaurus, though neither of them likely ever lived in Texas. The Brontosaurus at the Park was once owned by Sinclair Oil, famous for its mascot, “Dino”.
A short distance from the entrance to the Park are the two other dinosaur spinoffs: Dinosaur World, which from the exterior seemed to cheesy to even bother with and the Creation Evidence Museum. But my curiosity was piqued by the creationism museum and what it had to say about dinosaurs.
The Museum was founded by a TV personality, Carl Baugh, to promote the view that the Bible tells you all you need to know about pretty much everything, including science. He does not deny the existence of dinosaurs but posits that humans and dinosaurs roamed the Earth at the same time.
The “evidence” for this was so flagrantly fake, I kept looking around to see if anyone else got the joke: a purportedly pre-Columbian jug with a handle in the shape of a dinosaur, a freakishly tall man who had feet presumably the size of dinosaurs, and on and on.
Baugh seems to harbor unique antipathy for the preeminent paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who apparently visited the Museum and remained a “critic and skeptic” of creation science. But his remedy is certain, accept Jesus and a literal reading of the Bible.
I might have dismissed it all as the work of a snake oil salesman, until I went up to the second floor of the Museum. Expecting to find more “fossil evidence” that the Flood occurred a few thousand years ago, was stunned to be greeted by a banner reading “ISRAEL IS SPECIAL”.
Israel and Creationism? I moved bit more slowly through this part of the Museum. As a Jew, I was well aware of the enthusiastic support of the Israeli government by conservative evangelical Christians, but I had never come face to face with it.
The exhibit laid it out pretty clearly: Israel is special for being the birthplace of Jesus. And just like Stephen Jay Gould (who was a secular Jew), all the Jews need to do is accept Jesus and God’s mission will be complete. Even the use of the tallit, the Jewish prayer shawl, was somehow tied to Jesus.
Just as with the fake fossil evidence below, the second floor displayed an assortment of alleged reproductions of ancient Jewish texts that somehow allegedly proved something about the Jews and their failure to accept Jesus. But by this time I was feeling a mix of fury and anxiety. This Creationist had devoted an entire floor of his museum to Jews and Israel; the obsession had moved from creepy to terrifying.
Though my first instinct had to dismiss the Museum as the work of a crackpot, on the second floor it finally sunk in that these same crackpots are running the federal government. Not a huge leap from creation science to climate denial. And the Texas State Education Agency has proposed a Christian Bible-themed curriculum for public schools.
“I’m done here”, I said to Pete, “time to head to Austin.” The city about which Governor Abbot once had this to say: I got to tell you, it’s great getting out of the People’s Republic of Austin,” the governor said during his time at the Bell County Republican Dinner’s podium. “As you’re driving, you guys know this, as you leave Austin and start heading up North you start feeling different and once you cross the Travis County line, it starts smelling different and you know what that fragrance is? Freedom. It’s the smell of freedom that does not exist in Austin, Texas.”
Old and On the Way 