Home away from home

Thought I'd drop you a few postcards from the road and let you see some of the beauty we're enjoying. This is the Big Bend area in West Texas...a spectacularly rugged part of our very large and diverse state.

country-magazine.com

nationalgeographic.com

philly.com

Naturally, I'm writing all these "vacation posts" pre-vacation...so expect to see some of my own photos of the trip on Instagram.

Many of you know that I'm not really into roughing it. I'm more a "stop-the-(air-conditioined)car-and-let-me-get-a-shot-of that" kind of gal. And if you read a fairly recent post I did on tent camping, you'll know, too, that I want a real mattress, not an air mattress. To keep me from being cranky, my outdoor-loving daughter booked us a lovely suite at a recently restored 25-room historic hotel, which has captured all the charm of the Old West with some distinctly modern twists.

Historic exterior - Holland Hotel
thehollandhoteltexas.com

Restored exterior
thehollandhoteltexas.com

Historic lobby
thehollandhoteltexas.com

Restored lobby
thehollandhoteltexas.com

Restored dining room and patio
thehollandhoteltexas.com

Our accommodations
thehollandhoteltexas.com

For those of you who live in other parts of the world, here's a quick lesson on Texas geography that you might find interesting.

buzzfeed.com

Texas is roughly 10% larger than France and around twice as large as Germany or Japan, so the drive from Fort Worth to Big Bend country takes around 7.5 hours. Texas is quite geographically diverse, with coastal plains and marshes, grassy plains, pine and hardwood forests, blackland plains, rolling hills, plateaus and mountain ranges. On our trip, we'll travel through several distinctly different regions.