[Marilyn]

Texas has such a variety of climates and landscapes, it's almost like the state is in fairly distinct sections. You can have a totally different impression than someone else who has visited depending on where you went.

We live in the coastal plains & can travel to either salt water bays or fresh water lakes easily. The people here either hunt, fish, ranch in their spare time. Many work for the chemical plants or in the oil and gas industry. The land is flat and the trees around here are predominately live oaks, pecan, mesquite and husache.

You can go to the piney woods of East Texas which looks a lot like Arkansas or northern Louisiana.

Central Texas is hill country with cedar trees, some large oaks & pecans in the river bottoms, beautiful and higher, dryer elevation than the coastal areas. San Antonio and Austin are the heart of this area.

The area between the coastal plains and hill country is goregous, gentle rolling hills with large oak trees and right now, fields of wild flowers.

West Texas has a lot of sand, semi-desert with few trees, lots of dust storms, some mountains. I have an uncle out there in Odessa who thinks it's beautiful. It's just not for me.

The Dallas area is nice, kinda a combination of the piney woods and the hill country.

The panhandle around Amarillo is also flat and pretty desolate while some areas are nice, it holds no appeal for me. The people are great out in the panhandle and in west Texas, some of the nicest people you could ever meet. We think that's because all they have out there is each other and their relationships, so they make good ones. They have a really neat accent out there, very strereotypical Texas accent, like in the movies.

Yes, I do love my state, but I also love to travel, and some of you live in some extremely beautiful areas. If my roots were not so deeply embedded in this area, the Carolinas are very tempting!!!