60-Minute Man
The Dallas Morning News
BY JOE NICK PATOSKI
October 24, 2003
"Leaving on a Jet Plane,” the pop hit by Peter, Paul and Mary, may have put the romance in flying. But despite all the nonstops from D/FW Airport to just about anywhere in the world, and as appealing as Machu Picchu on the Same Day sounds, truth is I have neither the money nor the time, much less the patience, to play that fantasy out.
My song is “Sixty Minute Man,” the doo-wop classic recorded by Billy Ward & His Dominoes 52 years ago. I’m not that kind of 60-minute dude (I wish!) but a 60-minute man when it comes to getting away. Give me the road trip that’s brief and close to home.
Unfortunately, sticking to the Dominoes’ theory by getting away in an hour or less around these parts is a real challenge. You can blow an hour in traffic alone and still be stuck inside the city limits.
Avoid rush-hour traffic, leave from the right part of the sprawl, and most important, head in the right direction, and you’ll find the ideal version of Texas, exotic nooks and crannies that are way, way out there, all reachable in LensCrafters time.
Disclaimer: Our 60-minute man assumes no responsibility for speeding tickets caused by trying to get to where you’re going within the officially designated time limit. Don’t rush it.
MOVIE TEXAS
Twenty-eight miles south of Dealey Plaza is about the most perfect small town in Texas, an opinion shared by dozens of film crews that have used Waxahachie, its gingerbread homes and the surrounding countryside as stage sets. Bob Phillips even stages his annual Texas Country Reporter festival here.
 DMN FILE 2002 |
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The Ellis County Courthouse is the centerpiece of downtown Waxahachie.
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The 15-block downtown clustered around the majestic Ellis County Courthouse is a mega-flashback, including the meticulously restored, 91-year-old historic Rogers Hotel, a working soda fountain (Weezer’s Classic Cup) and fancy dining choices (LaPrelle, Emory’s Bistro).
Check the Webb Gallery for Venzil Zatoupil’s toothpick sculpture of a Ferris wheel (constructed with 9,900 toothpicks and 140 chopsticks) and an excellent array of other folk art.
Stop in at the Ellis County Museum on the corner of the square for driving-tour directions to places that appeared in such films as Tender Mercies, The Trip to Bountiful, Places in the Heart and Don Henley’s “The End of the Innocence” music video.
From Waxahachie, it’s a 15-minute drive west on FM66 – which, for romantic purposes, will be referred to as Texas Route 66 – to Maypearl, through a rolling countryside where tract homes are beginning to pop up, the kind of setting that so intrigued David Byrne when he filmed True Stories, the quirky paean to specialness, around Dallas.
Casting director Carla James says Maypearl “may be the most beautiful place on earth in the spring.” The wide open spaces hold up pretty well, too. The reward at the end of the road is a real, honest comfort meal at the Busy Bee Cafe, a classic chat ‘n’ chew where CFS on Mondays for lunch is $5.75 with tea and dessert. The Busy Bee is now open on some evenings, and on weekends there’s music by touring Texas singer-songwriters at the Back of the Bee.
Head home by taking FM157 north from Maypearl to Venus, 10 miles away. The old bank on the corner of the humble rectangle that passes for the town square and part of the covered sidewalk on the main street were used as a backdrop when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty were playing Texas’ most notorious bank-robbing couple in the film Bonnie and Clyde in 1967.
Rogers Hotel: 100 N. College St., Waxahachie. 972-938-3688 or 1-800-556-4192. www.rogershotel.com
Webb Gallery: Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. and by appointment. 209-211 W. Franklin, Waxahachie. 972-938-8085. www.webbartgallery.com
Ellis County Museum: Mondays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sundays 1 to 5 p.m. 201 S. College St., Waxahachie. 972-937-0681.
Busy Bee Cafe: Mondays through Saturdays from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., also Thursdays from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and Fridays from 5:30 p.m. to midnight. 301 N. Main St., Maypearl. 972-435-8222.
OFF-ROADING A CONVERSATION AWAY
Sure, that Hummer may look like a tank and act like a rugged off-road vehicle on a four-lane superslab. But has it really ever been deep in the mud or crawled up a pile of rocks? Put that big-wheeler hog or jimmied Jeep to the test at Tim McGill’s AGR Wheelin’ Ranch. The street-legal off-road ranch is 69 miles northwest of Denton and the Interstate 35 split. Overnight at the Nocona Hills Motel and Campground or the Nocona Inn.
AGR Wheelin’ Ranch: Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sundays by appointment. Take I-35 north to Gainesville, go west on U.S. Highway 82 for about 30 miles, go right on FM1815 until it dead ends, go left on FM1956, right on FM3301, then enter the Nocona Hills gate on the left. $20 a day for vehicle and driver, $5 for each additional passenger. 214-435-7196. www.agrwheelinranch.com.
Nocona Hills Campground and Motel: FM3301, then left on Nocona Drive, left on Country Club Drive, Nocona. 940-825-3445 (campground) and 940-825-3161 (motel).
Nocona Inn: 219 Clay St., Nocona. 940-825-8800.
HIGH ROLLING ON THE LONE STAR SAVANNA
Glen Rose, about an hour southwest of downtown Fort Worth, used to be known for its outstanding examples of petrified wood architecture and the dinosaur tracks in the bed of the Paluxy River. These days, it’s a nature hub, beginning with Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, part drive-through zoo and part breeding and research facility for native, exotic, threatened and endangered wildlife including giraffes, rhinos, zebras and wolves. Self-guided tours ($16.95) and behind-the-scenes guided tours ($35, $25 for kids) are fun, but overnights in the Lodge or the Foothills Safari Camp, inspired by lodges in Kenya, are dreamy.
Hunters and nonhunters gravitate up the road to Rough Creek Lodge, an even higher-end rustic luxury lodge that features upland bird, deer, and hog hunting, fly fishing, bird watching and fine dining.
On the same road is Dr. Rickey Fain’s Quail Ridge Ranch, a more intimate five-room version of Rough Creek, with a main lodge, upland bird hunting, fishing, wildlife watching and gourmet meals. The ranch is a showcase of sound stewardship, with the land restored to its native condition of more than 100 years ago.
Hico, 20 more miles down State Highway 220, is about as Western as a Western town can get in these parts, with saddle shops, a Billy the Kid Museum (the outlaw William H. Bonney allegedly hid out here and died an old man) and Dublin Dr Pepper served at better establishments.
Fossil Rim Wildlife Center: Daily from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Three miles southwest of Glen Rose just off U.S. Highway 67. $16.95, $12.95 seniors 62 and up, $10.95 children 4-11. All ages half-price on Wednesdays. 254-897-2960. www.fossilrim.com.
The Lodge at Fossil Rim and the Foothills Safari Camp: Inside the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, Glen Rose. 254-897-2960.
Rough Creek Lodge Executive Conference Center Retreat & Resort: Take Highway 67 west through Glen Rose. Take a left on County Road 2013, about 12 miles outside of Glen Rose, then go about four more miles and look for the signs. 254-965-3700. www.roughcreek.com.
Quail Ridge Ranch: 1755 County Road 2013, 13 miles outside of Glen Rose. 1-866-897-3618. www.quailridgeranch.com.
RUN FOR THE BORDER
 IRWIN THOMPSON / DMN |
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Check out Oklahoma’s recently upgraded WinStar Casino.
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OK, the WinStar Casino in Oklahoma isn’t Vegas, much less Ciudad Acuña. Then again, Acuña isn’t Acuña anymore. And it isn’t Bossier City, La., either. What the Chickasaw Nation’s former Touso Ishto bingo is, is a long hour’s drive from downtown Dallas, half the distance to the Louisiana line, which translates into more quality time when you get there to fritter away whatever coinage you’ve brought with you.
The recently expanded and upgraded 110,000-square-foot layout has two spacious casinos with more than 1,000 slotlike video lottery terminals operating bingo, poker and eight-liner-type games, as well as off-track betting, a mega-buffet, an upscale restaurant specializing in Southwestern cuisine and a theater bringing in “name” talent (Jimmy “JJ” Walker!).
What WinStar doesn’t have is booze. No alcohol is served. To compensate, save enough running change to motor north up Interstate 35 to Exit 24 for a suite, cottage or floating cabin at Lake Murray State Park and Resort and throw yourself a party.
WinStar Casino: Daily from 9 a.m. to 6 a.m. the next morning. I-35 north to Exit 1, near Thackerville, Okla. 580-276-4229. www.winstarcasinos.com.
Lake Murray State Park and Resort: I-35 north to Exit 24, go east two miles to the park, which is just north of Thackerville. 1-800-257-0322 or 580-223-6600.
HEARTLAND PRAIRIE
Stop obsessing over the St. Augustine, Bermuda and bent grass and get out in real nature. Just east of Greenville, 60 miles northeast of downtown Dallas, is the Paul Mathews Prairie Nature Preserve, a pristine meadow of grasses that were here before people were. The prairie’s good earth has never been broken by a plow and is one of the last remnants of the once vast, 12 million-acre Texas Blackland Prairie, a surviving chunk of wild America in a region that’s been otherwise tamed or paved over.
See what Spanish explorers and early pioneers were talking about when they described grass as high as a horse’s belly. The sweep of the sea of big bluestem, switchgrass and Indiangrass waving in the wind is downright exhilarating. In springtime, the prairie is about as close to heaven as you can get in Hunt County.
Paul Mathews Prairie Nature Preserve: From the U.S. Highway 69 junction in Greenville, go west on U.S. Highway 380 for 4 1/2 miles, then north on FM903 for two miles, west on County Road 1116, then west two miles to County Road 1119. Look for the wood sign marking the prairie. (There’s no parking lot or building, just the meadow.) For more information or directions, call the Greenville Convention and Visitors Bureau, 903-455-1510.
COZUMEL JR.
This Athens may not be in another country, but to scuba divers, it’s close enough. Until recently, they had to settle for Possum Kingdom northwest of Mineral Wells or Lake Travis near Austin for some semblance of diving clarity, if they couldn’t make it to Cozumel for the gin-clear stuff.
That was before Calvin and Shannon Wilcher and their son Alex took a 7.5-acre spring-fed quarry six blocks from the town square and 70 miles southeast of downtown Dallas and salted it with underwater wrecks including singer Ray Price’s first touring bus and a Lockheed C-140 Jet Star. They constructed entry docks and a full-service dive shop and let the 35-foot visibility (sometimes ranging up to 70 feet) do the rest. The result is Athens Scuba Park, an unexpected haven for divers and swimmers, with scuba instruction, RV hookups and overnight camping.
Next up to take the underwater plunge: A Dallas DART bus will become the newest attraction when it’s pulled into the water on Nov. 1.
East of the scuba park is another water attraction tailored for the rod-and-reel crowd, the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center. The Texas Parks & Wildlife’s tribute to fishing includes a Fishing Hall of Fame museum; replicas of streams, lakes, and wetlands; catch-and-release fishing in stocked ponds (tackle supplied); aquariums; dive shows; and a hatchery and lab.
Athens Scuba Park: Fridays from noon to 5 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Camping available. $15 per diver per day, extra for camping. 500 Murchison St., Athens. 903-675-5762. www.athensscubapark.com.
Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center: Tuesdays through Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sundays 1 to 4 p.m. 5550 Flat Creek Road (FM2495), Athens. $5.50, $4.50 seniors, $3.50 ages 4-12. 903-676-2277. www.tpwd.state.tx.us/fish/infish.
FREDERICKSBURG NORTH
German towns have a rep for being well-built and neat as a pin. Muenster, a small, close-knit community of 1,500, is 73 miles from Dallas and Fort Worth on U.S. Highway 82, just south of the Oklahoma line, and it plays to the stereotype.
Surrounded by a wide-open landscape of rolling hills that sprawl west all the way to the foothills of the Rockies, the town was settled by German immigrants in 1889. Over the years it has managed to retain much of its Old Country charm in the forms of the Catholic church (the town’s most prominent structure), restaurants serving Westphalia-inspired cuisine, three meat markets that grind their own sausage, a bakery with all the requisite sweets, a town museum and a main street of shops and stores. You can also buy your natural dog food direct from Muenster Milling, endorsed by Nolan Ryan and Howard Garrett, the Dirt Doctor.
There’s one motel in town, the A-OK, and Miss Olivia’s bed and breakfast, and plenty of other overnight options are available in Gainesville, 13 miles east.
The town rolls out the barrel for Germanfest every April. The Muenster Chamber of Commerce (940-759-2227) and the North Texas Info Web site (www.nortexinfo.net/gfest) have the details.
Muenster Milling: Open Mondays through Fridays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. 202 S. Main, Muenster. 1-800-772-7178. www.muenstermilling.com.
A-OK Motel: 700 E. Division, Muenster. 940-759-2268.
Miss Olivia’s Bed & Breakfast: 319 S. Denton, Gainesville. 940-665-5558. www.missolivias.com