☰Buffalo Gap

Perini Ranch Steakhouse is the reason most people drive to Buffalo Gap. There are a couple of other places — a barbecue spot or two, a small cafe near the Historic Village — but none worth a special trip. Most visitors do lunch at Perini's, walk the village, and head back to Abilene for dinner.

Buffalo Gap is fifteen miles south of Abilene, reached along Texas Farm-to-Market Road 89 — a pleasant rural drive across the Callahan Divide. There is no public transport. The nearest commercial airport is Abilene Regional, with limited connections via Dallas.

For a day trip from Dallas or Fort Worth, plan on about three hours each way; from Austin, about four. The roads are flat and easy and there is essentially no traffic.

Buffalo Gap is small enough that an afternoon will cover its main sights. The Buffalo Gap Historic Village is the obvious anchor — twenty preserved frontier buildings on a single grass site — and a meal at the Perini Ranch Steakhouse is the other reason a steady trickle of West Texans drives out here.

The surrounding Callahan Divide country is pleasantly empty rolling-hill terrain dotted with old live oaks, a few over eight hundred years old. Abilene State Park just west of town has an outdoor pool built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and an easy network of short hiking trails.