Since leaving Nebraska last December, Local Color XC has explored 13 states and counting. Nothing could have prepared us for Port Arthur, TX, without a doubt the most depressing - and, in turn, enlightening - stop on our trip. For his second "Road Trip USA" installment for USA TODAY, Carson chose to write about our experience in Port Arthur, a city that produces nearly a million barrels of crude oil a day and yet, somehow, shows no signs of prosperity.

We felt a certain heaviness that night as we tossed in our sleep, a surreal neon glow tinting the window shades. It doesn’t take long to feel that way in Port Arthur; what it must feel like to live there, to breathe the putrid stench of the refineries, I can only imagine.

To be a tourist in Port Arthur is to ignore your own reflection. You don’t tour anything here. You swallow it.

Read the full story at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2016/02/27/port-arthur-texas/81002214/