Located at the very gateway of the Texas Oil Field, the Gaston Museum preserves the history of the early oil booms. See what it was like to live and work in the oil fields in the decades between 1930 and 1960. Many of the buildings still stand.

A sculpture garden grows outside and the collections keep expanding inside. Paint and marble, bronze and pencil, all media are represented in the Longview Museum of Fine Arts and that's the permanent exhibit. The rotating exhibits are constantly changing.

Nacogdoches is the oldest town in Texas and Millard's Crossing Historic Village is half reconstruction and half reenactment. You'll walk through historic buildings and perform tasks that pioneer forebears would have performed, from drawing water to pushing plows.

Texas, as a whole, may not be known for its roses, but Tyler is the "City of Roses," even the "Rose Capital of the Nation." You can expect that its rose gardens are immense, and they are, 40,000 rose bushes strong, blooming in hundreds of different varieties.

Texas has many species of freshwater fish and you can see a grand majority of them here. Not only can you tour the hatchery and the massive aquariums, you can even fish for free -- and they'll provide the poles.