[bsimpson]

I'm from Nevada, another state that people presume is all desert. (Really, it's all mountains.)

The only part of Texas I've driven is between Austin and S Antonio. It was perhaps the least-beautiful wilderness I've driven through. It really did just feel like desert and billboards - like if Walmart was a highway.

But I also presume Texas marketing itself as a less-regulated alternative (e.g. to California) is why it's easy to imagine Texas wanting infrastructure that Maine might not.

[blululu]

Nevada is a gem. Way too dry but incredibly beautiful with some truly unique features (ancient trees, hot springs, strange minerals, clear dark night skies). Eastern/central Texas is far less interesting.

[taormina]

Between Austin and San Antonio is so developed that it's considered by many to be a single "metro" area, DFW-style. There's very little not developed directly between the two.

[JuniperMesos]

I drove that way in 2024 for the solar eclipse. Some parts of that route struck me as a bit exurb-ish and spread-out, I wouldn't call it a single metro area, but there were definitely people living there. And it was way too green to be called a desert; I've driven through actual deserts in southern CA and nowhere that I saw in that part of Texas was anywhere near that dry (I guess you have to go further west to get to actual Texas desert, which we didn't do on that trip).

[CuriouslyC]

The deserts around El Paso are still quite a bit more alive than the ugliest desert I've ever seen (the stretch between Phoenix and San Diego gets that dubious honor).

[bsimpson]

This was 15 years ago. Maybe it was less developed then, or maybe my memory conflated that drive with another part of that trip.

[lizknope]

Most people never bother to look at a map.

It takes 2 seconds to look at google satellite view of the area and see lots of desert with strips of green

https://maps.app.goo.gl/R8HuWBi66548Jq5BA

Of course you already know this but for everyone else it is called the Basin and Range province. You have desert areas and then a mountain range with much higher elevation with cooler temperatures and more precipitation which means trees and forests and green in color

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basin_and_Range_Province

[leptons]

> and green in color

Okay, we'll give Nevada a participation award for "green in color". Maine wins the "green in color" category by a lot. It's orders of magnitude greener.

"Green" isn't everything though. Nevada has a lot of brown going for it!

Oh, Maine also has a tidal coastline of 3478 miles, but Nevada is landlocked. Nevada does have a couple of big lakes though.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Wallace Stegner said that to appreciate the arid west, “You have to get over the color green; you have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns…”

[leptons]

I've spent at least a hundred weekends camping in the Mojave desert over the last 30 years. There is beauty there, but a lot of the beauty is more about what's not there than what is there. And what's green really stands out. The creosote is amazing and some of it has been there thousands of years. The King Clone circle has been there 11,000 years and is still going.

That said, if I had to choose between Nevada and Maine for a getaway, I'd choose Maine.

[sidewndr46]

Yeah, you drove through part of the Texas Triangle. Not really an area I would go to for sights

[seandhi]

Ah yes, the vast, undeveloped wilderness of I-35 between Austin and San Antonio. Totally just unoccupied desert.