The TAAF Winter Games of Texas are a chance for amateur athletes to get out there and compete in events that range from such Olympic standards as figure skating to no less fun events as flag football and cheerleading. Find the games in Frisco in January.
February in Beaumont is Mardi Gras month, all bright parades and live music. In between concerts and the march of floats and dancers is the carnival itself, all lights and festivities.
The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is what it sounds like. Livestock shows, cattle wrangling, live music, and the World Championship Bar-B-Que contest fill up Houston’s March.
South by Southwest, one of Austin's two big music events, plays out in March. Hundreds of bands play here, but so do experimental films. This is also a festival for the latest breaking technologies.
If it isn't the biggest party in Texas, who knows what is? Fiesta San Antonio is ten days and a hundred events. Mariachi bands and Tejana music, hat contests, art shows, carnivals, mini-fiestas within fiestas. It's all in San Antonio come April.
Texas is a state for music, but the Kerrville Folk Festival is unique in putting its focus on the singer-songwriter. And, well, don't expect big, "plugged in" bands here; the roughest thing will be acoustic rock. Amateurs and legends both play on the stages of the Hill Country in May.
On June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, General Granger announced all slaves in the Southwest free, which served as the final blow to American slavery. Juneteenth celebrations began in Galveston, but it’s now a state holiday (and not just in Texas).
There's no sight quite like the mottle of bright balloons against the sky . . . especially if they're racing. The Great Texas Balloon Race in Longview is exactly that; a race. Many of these pilots are professional, many come from around the world. The races occupy the morning, but the glowing balloons are gorgeous at night.
Every August, cyclers from across the nation gather to Wichita Falls for Hotter ‘N Hell Hundred, tackling routes that range from ten miles in length to one hundred. The heat and the demands on the bikers’ endurance are the primary opponents.
Tyler’s Rose Festival is an affair of hundreds of thousands of blooms. Beyond the brilliantly landscaped Municipal Gardens, which are visible (if not blooming) year-round, there’s a Rose Parade, a Rose Show, a Rose Queen. Come visit the Piney Woods in October.
Big Tex and his giant mannequin might presides over the Texas State Fair, that biggest of state fairs set in that massive Texas city, Dallas. October (and a smidgen of September) is full of midway rides, shows, state-size parades; really, an endless array of events.
November in Harlingen is bird month and avid and beginning birders alike can hope to see species from the Great Blue Heron and the Muscovy Duck to the Laughing Gull and the Aplomado Falcon. This is the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival and the Rio Grande Valley is never happier than when it's birding.
If a single weekend of 16th century nostalgia is insufficient for you, Plantersville's Texas Renaissance Festival keeps the historical goodness going through October and November, with eight themed weekends and hundreds of performances. There is no Renaissance fair larger in the U.S.
Lubbock's National Ranching Center is host to Candlelight at the Ranch in December. You'll walk the museum's sixteen acres, dark save for candlelight and lanterns, and watch Christmas recreated in historical progression from 1780 to 1920.
During the Fiesta de las Luminarias, the San Antonio River lights up with thousands of candles in parts of November and December. These candles light the way for the Holy Family traveling to Bethlehem and this is the best time to travel San Antonio’s River Walk.
