4/10/2023 0 Comments Road tripper texasThe idea was to film day trips within a two-hour driving distance from Austin. While working at the firm, he borrowed some camera gear from a friend and filmed the pilot episode for a new show called The Austin Daytripper. There’s this treasure trove of stuff out there to explore. “I was like, man, Texans need to know more about the state. “I realized the stuff in Texas was as good or better than what I’d paid an expensive plane ticket to see overseas,” he says. And in the meantime, he started taking trips around the state again, because he could do them quickly, in a day or weekend or so. So, he and his wife Laura bought a house in East Austin and saved money while he hatched an escape plan. The paycheck was nice, but now that he was a practicing attorney, he was about to have all the money he needed to see the rest of the world and no time to do it. A week or two in, he realized he hated his job. He enrolled in law school at Baylor and continued to travel, earned stellar marks, and landed a high-paying job at a law firm in Austin in 2006. Because it’s what college students do, he backpacked across Europe and Asia, twice, eager to experience the world outside Texas. Garner and his three siblings would fight over who got to sleep on the mattress tucked in the back.īy the time he enrolled at UT in 1999, he felt like he’d seen the whole state. Because family trips began in the far reaches of Texas, that giant SUV was forced to traverse back roads for stretches upwards of six or seven hours at a time. He was born in Comanche, Texas, but raised in Port Neches, the southeasternmost corner of the state, a fateful notion, if you believe in such things. The son of a physician and a schoolteacher, he remembers packing into the family Suburban for trips around the state to visit relatives. Garner spent countless hours on the road as a child. “Is it fun? It’s definitely new.” And so, he soldiers on, looking over rough cuts from his editors, recording voiceovers, rewriting scripts, and managing his small Daytripper team remotely as he patiently awaits the return of what we can call, tentatively, “normal life.” The man who makes his living being among strangers, eating barbecue at shacks or tip-toeing through rose gardens in far-flung places across the state, driving hours and hours for the sole purpose of feeling the air on his skin, is stuck inside with twice as many kids as adults. Or, rather, it’s still there, but the rays are out of range these days from where he sits in the home he shares with his wife and five children. There is no Gulf Coast or Big Bend sunshine from which he needs to protect his head. His well-worn Stetson rests behind him on a table, rendering it useless. This past spring I catch up with him in, of all places, his house in Georgetown, Texas, over Zoom-the road warrior now sheltering in place. Over the course of 126 episodes, Garner, BS ’03, Life Member, has taken viewers to every corner of the state to see the beauty and mystery that Texas has to offer. If you’ve ever seen the show, now in the middle of its 11th season, you’ve seen Garner doing some combination of the following in Amarillo or Tyler or Longview or another town in Texas you’ve always been meaning to visit but haven’t made it to yet: smiling as he devours brisket, smiling as he drains a cold beer, smiling as he shakes the hand of the local who slices his brisket or pours his beer. Pre-pandemic, the host and creator of the PBS show The Daytripper could usually be found, well, day tripping around the state. Get that perfect picture of you leaning on the cowboy-laden tower and make Orville Peck proud.How the Daytripper Became the King of the RoadĬhet Garner is easy to track down these days. Built by a local iron worker's union, this ode to the town's well-known namesake stands tall at 65 feet. Who says you need to go to France to see the Eiffel Tower? Just east of the DFW area, in Paris, Texas, the Eiffel Tower looks a little more yeehaw with a cherry red cowboy hat sitting on the very top. Do some A1 thrift shopping at LGBTQ-owned Out of the Closet, grab a bite to eat at popular burger joint Hunky's where drag queens take your order, and grab some cute new undies at Skivvies.Įiffel Tower With Big Cowboy Hat (Paris, TX) The Oak Lawn District has been rated as one of the best gayborhoods in the country and is comprised of some of the best gay bars, lesbian bars, clubs, and places to see drag shows in all of Texas. Dallas has a flourishing LGBTQ+ community, and their nightlife shows it.
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