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Cyclists along the path of the East Texas Showdown.On a damp March morning, I strapped bags full of camping gear to the frame of my gravel bike and joined about 250 cyclists for the fourth annual East Texas Showdown, one of the state’s biggest and longest bikepacking events. The starting line was in Point Blank, about twenty miles east of Huntsville. For the first hour or so, the pack rode east together, swarming the two-mile stretch of U.S. 190 spanning the massive breadth of Lake Livingston. Those first ten miles were deceptively smooth as we fell into pace and familiarized ourselves with the faces we’d get to know for the next 165 (or 280 or 400) miles. We said goodbye to the smooth highway as we turned onto our first gravel road. Then…

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A ghost wolf in GalvestonBridgett vonHoldt was grabbing lunch at Viet Cajun, a restaurant on the Galveston Island Seawall, when a chatty local approached her. The man had pegged her and her group, correctly, as out-of-towners. Birders, he figured, if the binoculars they carried were any clue. “You know what you should do,” he told vonHoldt, “is go look at these wolves.” VonHoldt was thrilled at the suggestion—not because it was the kind of locally sourced hot tip that travelers crave, but because she is one of the preeminent experts on the “ghost wolves” of Galveston, coyotes that carry unusually high levels of DNA from red wolves, the world’s most endangered wolf. VonHoldt, an associate professor of evolutionary genomics at Princeton University, and Kristin Brzeski, a conservation geneticist now at…

The post The Ghost Wolves of Galveston vs. Margaritaville appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Shane and Sally: Episode 7Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Read the transcript below.Learn more about the case with original videos, archival photos, and documents from our reporting in our episode guide. Subscribe Apple Podcasts — Spotify “You want to love your kid forever. But once they pass on, the only thing you can take forward from them is the love that you had for ’em and the good times that you shared.”—Marshall StewartIn the final episode of Shane and Sally, victims in a series of unsolved attacks at the lakes surrounding San Angelo wonder if their assailants were also the ones who killed Shane Stewart and Sally McNelly. Investigators discuss the possibility that someone in law enforcement could know more about the murders than they’ve let…

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Texas Monthly March and November 2023 coversEarlier this month, the Texas Monthly art department was named a finalist in seven categories by the Society of Publication Designers—one of them being brand of the year. TM is in prestigious company in that category, nominated alongside Garden & Gun, The Guardian, National Geographic, and The New York Times Magazine. Texas Monthly was recognized as a finalist in the below categories:Brand of the YearTexas MonthlyDesign: Cover, News/Documentary/EssayMarch 2023, “The Campaign to Sabotage Public Schools“Design: Feature, Lifestyle/Travel/Food/Shelter; StoryNovember 2023, “The Good Place“Photography: Feature, Lifestyle/Travel/Food/Shelter; Single/SpreadMarch 2023, “Where to Eat Now“Photography: Feature, Lifestyle/Travel/Food/Shelter; StoryNovember 2023, “The Good Place“Illustration: StorySeptember 2023, “We’re #1“Social: Entire Channel@TexasMonthly Instagram The winners will be announced during the 59th Annual SPD Awards Presentation in June. For a full list of finalists, click here. Congratulations to Emily Kimbro, Victoria…

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Inside the Lhakang in El Paso.The University of Texas at El Paso’s unlikely relationship with the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan dates to 1917, when the institution—then the Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy—moved to the foothills of the Franklin Mountains. Inspired by National Geographic photos of the remote country’s mountain fortresses, the dean’s wife pushed for campus buildings to be designed in the Bhutanese architectural style. Visitors today can admire their thick, sloping walls, high inset windows, overhanging roofs, and brick-mosaic borders. They can also see an authentic Bhutanese structure. Originally constructed for a festival in Washington, D.C., the Lhakhang (which roughly translates to “temple”) was given to the school in 2008 to honor a special friendship—Bhutanese students have attended UTEP for decades. Built without nails by artisans…

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Enchilada meat loaf covered in chili sauceHow do you make an American classic like meat loaf a bit more . . . Texan? You treat it like a giant enchilada. Specifically, a truck stop enchilada, by drowning it in a chili gravy and melting a heavy blanket of orange cheese over the top.Truck stop enchiladas likely need no introduction, but in case you’re new here, let’s give a brief primer on this quintessential Tex-Mex dish, named for its ubiquity at roadside oases. Lightly spiced ground beef is rolled in corn tortillas; doused in a mild roux-based chili sauce; and topped with cheese, onions, and, perhaps, pickled jalapeños. It’s comfort food at its best, as familiar on Texas menus as chicken-fried steak or fajitas. It’s not a huge leap to transpose that…

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Who Knew Badgers Are All Over Texas?When it comes to encounters with badgers—a relatively common mammal, but one so rarely seen that most Texans don’t even know they are native to the state—North Padre Island resident Tom Howe has a good story. One morning last August, the 67-year-old was driving along Padre Island National Seashore after a fishing outing. When he saw something moving between the surf and the dunes, he thought it was a raccoon or maybe a coyote pup. But the wet, bedraggled creature digging in the sand “put its head up when I got closer, and I go, ‘Oh, that’s a badger. What’s it doing out here?’ ”Howe, a retired United Methodist minister, had only recently learned that badgers lived in the area, but he knew seeing one in…

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Aldama, on March 29, 2024.Nobody came to Navarro cheer to be famous,” Monica Aldama said in her soft twang. She was sitting in her office, a long, narrow treehouse of a space tucked away on the second floor of the gym at Navarro College, in Corsicana, about an hour southeast of Dallas. The wall behind her desk was red and lined with trophies, and I recognized it as the spot from which she’d given many interviews on Cheer, the Netflix docuseries that rocketed her to fame. A large piece of what looked like butcher paper was taped across a fluorescent fixture in the ceiling—a diffusion filter placed by the camera crew to create a more flattering light—and I couldn’t tell if it was still there because she hadn’t noticed it…

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Glen Powell stars as Gary Johnson in the Netflix film Hit Man, adapted from a Texas Monthly feature.On Thursday, Netflix released the official trailer for Richard Linklater’s buzzy upcoming film, Hit Man, based on the Texas Monthly story by Skip Hollandsworth. Watch the full trailer below. The trailer has already received overwhelmingly positive responses from outlets like Rolling Stone, Vulture, Total Film, IndieWire, and more. The film, starring Glen Powell and Adria Arjona, will be released in select theaters May 24 and will premiere on Netflix June 7. This is Linklater’s second movie based on a Hollandsworth story—the 2011 film Bernie, starring Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, and Matthew McConaughey, was inspired by Hollandsworth’s “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas.”Stay tuned for more Hit Man content and other Texas Monthly true crime storytelling on our true crime hub, or subscribe to our true crime newsletter.

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April Pit PerksApril Pit Perks Brisket U | Get $15 off any Brisket U Class with code TXMNEWS24scTW Eaker Barbecue | 10% off merch and free sticker.* Tejas Chocolate & BBQ | 20% off merchandise, rubs, and sauce bottles.* HOT LUCK Live Food & Music Festival | Use code TMBBQCLUB24 for 20% off tickets!

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