I'm from Nevada, another state that people presume is all desert. (Really, it's all mountains.)

The only part of Texas I've driven is between Austin and S Antonio. It was perhaps the least-beautiful wilderness I've driven through. It really did just feel like desert and billboards - like if Walmart was a highway.

But I also presume Texas marketing itself as a less-regulated alternative (e.g. to California) is why it's easy to imagine Texas wanting infrastructure that Maine might not.

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blululu an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Nevada is a gem. Way too dry but incredibly beautiful with some truly unique features (ancient trees, hot springs, strange minerals, clear dark night skies). Eastern/central Texas is far less interesting.

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lizknope 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most people never bother to look at a map.

It takes 2 seconds to look at google satellite view of the area and see lots of desert with strips of green

https://maps.app.goo.gl/R8HuWBi66548Jq5BA

Of course you already know this but for everyone else it is called the Basin and Range province. You have desert areas and then a mountain range with much higher elevation with cooler temperatures and more precipitation which means trees and forests and green in color

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basin_and_Range_Province

	▲	leptons 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> and green in color Okay, we'll give Nevada a participation award for "green in color". Maine wins the "green in color" category by a lot. It's orders of magnitude greener. "Green" isn't everything though. Nevada has a lot of brown going for it! Oh, Maine also has a tidal coastline of 3478 miles, but Nevada is landlocked. Nevada does have a couple of big lakes though.

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sidewndr46 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, you drove through part of the Texas Triangle. Not really an area I would go to for sights

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taormina 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Between Austin and San Antonio is so developed that it's considered by many to be a single "metro" area, DFW-style. There's very little not developed directly between the two.

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JuniperMesos 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I drove that way in 2024 for the solar eclipse. Some parts of that route struck me as a bit exurb-ish and spread-out, I wouldn't call it a single metro area, but there were definitely people living there. And it was way too green to be called a desert; I've driven through actual deserts in southern CA and nowhere that I saw in that part of Texas was anywhere near that dry (I guess you have to go further west to get to actual Texas desert, which we didn't do on that trip).

	▲	CuriouslyC an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The deserts around El Paso are still quite a bit more alive than the ugliest desert I've ever seen (the stretch between Phoenix and San Diego gets that dubious honor).

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seandhi 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Ah yes, the vast, undeveloped wilderness of I-35 between Austin and San Antonio. Totally just unoccupied desert.