On the three hour drive between Austin and Dallas, my driving friend stop us at a place most wondrous. It is called Buc-ee's. The best way I can describe it is the biggest and best highway rest stop I’ve ever been to. There’s apparently many of them dotted all over the expansive Texas highways. To quote the great Stefon, it has absolutely everything.
Perhaps not all Buc-ee’s are similar in size, but the one we went to is enormous. The gas station portion alone I would say is three times the size of a typical Costco gas station. There’s plenty of space between each filling station too. Because it’s Texas, and large pickup trucks rule the road. So then imagine a whole Costco-size building itself is the rest stop - that’s the scale of Buc-ee’s I’m talking about here. The men’s bathroom alone have about 50 stalls, and it is spotlessly clean.
The rest of the store have anything and everything you could possibly want on a road trip - Christmas decorations included. Need an entirely new wardrobe? You can buy it at Buc-ee’s. There’s fresh BBQ and Tex-Mex at the hot foods section, and the world famous wall of jerky. If you’re a jerky enthusiasts, you’ve got to make a stop at a Buc-ee’s. Any meat suitable for jerky-ing, it is there. You can even buy it fresh, unpackaged.
The whole time we were stopped at the Buc-ee’s, I was just in awe of its amazingness. I’ve only previously been to these sort of fully-featured - and clean - highway rest stops in Asia. Never did I expect to find it here in the United States, much less in the State of Texas. Infrastructure has not really been our thing since they last built the great interstate system, you know? I’ll be long dead before the California bullet train project is completed.
Speaking of my State of California, why don’t we have something like Buc-ee’s alongside our highways? It would be perfect on the interminably long and straight highway 5. You can’t even argue there isn’t space like there is in Texas. I’m not asking for a Buc-ee’s in the middle of Los Angeles. Anyone who’s driven on highway 5 knows there’s nothing but farmland and cows for hundreds of miles. I think this is something California can learn and copy from Texas.
I am in awe.