The space cowboys

Sunday Mirror, Oct 12, 2008 by LINDSAY SUTTON

ONE minute you're a cowboy out on the prairie and the next you're inside a space shuttle feeling the urge to say: "Houston, the Eagle has landed."

And, as if on cue, the guy next to me at Houston's NASA Space Centre was soon muttering: "That's one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind."

Everything is larger than life in Texas. It's a big, big holiday experience.

You might expect kids today to be bowled over by the Space Centre with its high-tech wonders. Yet they seem just as excited by the simple, home-on-the-range ranch life.

On the Dixie Dude Ranch in Bandera, West Texas, every paying guest just loved pulling on their boots and living like a wrangler.

When the bell goes signalling "grub's up", everyone eats together in the ranch's dining room. It's three square meals a day, no menu, just good food, good company and good talkin'.

You can go horse riding twice a day moseying off to Dry Gulch Canyon or a ride out to Lookout Point. And even if you slow down to the pace of life on a real working ranch, two or three days can go by in a flash.

They know what they're doing at the 700-acre Bandera spread. Four generations of Conolys have run the place and they've taken in visitors since 1937 when Grandpa and Grandma Conoly thought better of trying to make it big in the movies in Hollywood and came back to their Texas roots.

Most evenings, there's a sing-song round the camp fire, story- telling with tall tales from tall Texans and the occasional rodeo rope display. Forget the outside world and go with the right attitude and you'll have yourself a ball.

It's a far cry from the big Texan cities of Houston and Dallas, not to mention Mexicanstyle San Antonio just an hour's drive down the road or the more arty state capital of Austin, one of America's top live music venues.

And with a song in your heart, who could ignore "Galveston, oh Galveston", a superb Victorian jewel of a resort on the Gulf Coast, just an hour's drive south of oil-rich Houston?

This was the city clobbered last month by Hurricane Ike. Thankfully, it was nothing compared with the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 which devastated the coastal town.

Today, extra sea defences and the decision to raise the town by 17ft means it's in better shape to cope with whatever the weather throws at it. But there's a whole lot more to Texas than the low- lying coastal belt on the Gulf of Mexico.

From the very moment you land in Da llas-For t Worth, you know you're in the Big Country. Even the hire car is from Alamo, which has you thinking about Davy Crockett and Daniel Boon long before you visit the Spanish mission where the Texans held out against the advancing Mexican army.

Back in Dallas, thoughts inevitably turn to JR Ewing, Brother Bobby, Sue Ellen and Miss Ellie. The TV show may be a distant memory, but you can still visit South Fork.

In Dallas - motto Live Large, Think Big - you can still smell the big money of cattle kings, land barons and oil tycoons. High-rise towers rival those of New York.

The swish Hyatt Regency Hotel has a huge pond with cascading fountains... inside the central lobby! But tucked in between the skyscrapers is the old town where you can get the authentic taste of old frontier Texas as you eat half a cow or a buffalo steak at the YO Ranch Steakhouse.

Then you can get fitted out with boots at Wild Bill's Western Store, or try on a stetson. By the time old-timer Bill Nelson has done with you, you'll know your Pinch-Front Dress Crown from your Cattleman's Crease.

An old warehouse provides a chilling reminder of Dallas's unwelcome claim to fame as the city where John F. Kennedy was assassinated. You can stand where Lee Harvey Oswald is said to have fired the fatal shots when you visit the museum set up to honour JFK's memory.

Austin is a world away from Dallas, especially if you book in at the Hyatt Lost Pines Spa and Resort.

Not just for the deep-tissue massage - the best I've ever had - but for the outdoor pursuits such as rafting down the Colorado River with guide Nick providing calls of the wild when he's not reciting Native American poetry. He speaks Comanche and does a mean bullfrog mating call.

All over Texas, the roadside verges bloom with bluebonnets, Indian paintbrushes and pink evening primrose. It's all thanks to Ladybird Johnson, wife of the late US President Lyndon B Johnson, a true son of Texas.

Ladybird was determined America's native wild flowers were preserved. She won her battle and the Wildflower Centre is testimony to her dogged fight. Austin's LBJ Library and Museum does justice to her husband's memory and so does his boyhood home in nearby Johnson City, a short distance from his ranch.

He and Ladybird first dated at Austin's historic Driskill Hotel, which transports you back to the year 1886 when cattle baron Jesse Driskill founded the place, complete with marble floors and Western decor.

Take afternoon tea there before moving on to a "fancy barbecue" at Lambert's Downtown BBQ. It's close to the river and at dusk up to 1.5 million Mexican bats swarm underneath the bridge. Quite a spectacle.