day 33 country side!!

Well Washington county is where we spent a good bit of time and we had heard that it was wonderful, and it lived up to the expectations. It was a wonderful ride. We almost immediately headed off to country roads. We went through the town of Round Top (population 77). It had some old buildings and beautiful farms very picturesque. From there we continued into the countryside with blue bonnets, Indian paint brushes as well as evening primroses EVERYWHERE!!! The farms, with white or wood fences are home to cattle and horses. This is my type of place. I just kept wishing that the day would go on forever and that I could ride and ride those roads. It was a day to amble, in a cycling sense.

We went through a little town of Independence, where there were old stone buildings and then on and on in countryside.

Coming into the town of Navasota had to be a bit of a let down after a day like that, so the route prepared us, by taking us back onto a more travelled road, with NO shoulder on the little bridges...it is the type of riding that gets you from one place to another, not something to savor, and from there we found Navasota, and then our hotel.

Yummy dinner, as always, and a rest day to come...Yeah!
Mileage..64 ish

Day 32-Bluebonnets at last

Today was a ride to La Grange...home of Weikel Bakery, where kolaches are made and noted by Gourmet Magazine. It is also the first day where we have seen the Bluebells en masse along the highways. How great could this all be? For those of you who may be wondering about Kolaches, they are like a pastry, with a very tender soft dough and the filling on top. This is not exactly what you get in the Kolache Factory stores, they are better. I got one with poppy seed and one with peach, and was wishing I could try each flavor! They were great!!! They also had pigs in a blanket, where a sausage was baked into the kolache dough.

So you are probably thinking....enough with food....is this a food trip??? Well, perhaps it is!!! I am certainly trying the local foods and eating as much as I can hold!!!

Today I am focused on the food and the flowers, because I woke up with a tummy-ache and the consequences of a virus....so riding was not for me today. I was SO disappointed, since we quite a build up to a fun ride in a park and after all the traffic of yesterday, I was excited that I would be in a park and then off on country roads. Well, contentment is a skill to practice and so I found wonderful things to be content with. I had time to read and finish a book this morning, I spent time with Linda our chef, who drove the van, and then our new leader, Carol Wilder...a fascinating woman...more on that in another blog....and then just getting to rest and recuperate, get laundry done and see the little town of La Grange, and mail off a package of stuff home. Finally, the wind was blowing and I missed that...of course it happened to be primarily a tail wind!!!! Oh well....

day 31 off to Bastrop

A ninety mile ride still puts butterflies into my stomach. Maybe it won't always do that, or maybe when it is an unknown ride it will. The area out of Blanco was more of the country roads we had had yesterday. We started out at dawn and as we headed east there was already a good breeze that came as a tailwind or a crosswind. As we rode we could see hills in up ahead of us. On the left were telephone poles with shimmering silvery wires measuring out the road on our left. The colors of the early morning are soft and muted and hills are flattened by the angled light. The birds sang joyfully and seeing riders cued up in front.

As usual we rode through little towns. Wimberley (most of the shops were closed) Kyle...where we saw a crazed driver of a pick up with a flat bed and an old RV thrown on top looking like it could topple off on anybody or anything it passed, and the Lockhart. Lockhart was by far my favorite of the towns. It looked like a town that had started in the late 1800's or early 1900's with a beautiful large old government center in the center of town and old brick building surrounding the town square. Coming into town were large homes that were probably built for the successful town fathers as well as quaint and homey cottages and bungalows. One of these, as we headed out of town had a front yard that was literally filled with flowers: poppies, salvia, with lots of others thrown in.

We headed out of town and found our way to a DQ (all the little shops were closed on Sundays)...so it was a chicken sandwich with Jalitos (fried jalapenos)...not bad!

The last thirty miles were just miles to get through. The road was narrow with no shoulder and too much traffic for my taste....but get through them we did...

Dinner was BBQ with coleslaw fresh fruit salad....yummy!!!

Mileage:89.2 3 miles less than what our cue sheet said and that was a good thing.

Day 30 in the country

What a fanstastic day....it may have just become my favorite to date! We headed out of Kerrville with overcast skies and on a loop around the city..nothing to interesting there. The good thing is that it took us out of the city quickly and we were soon riding on counrtry roads with very little traffic, and criss crossing over the Guadaloupe River. There were tree lined roads with ranches on either side. Livestock grazing in bucolic landscapes.

The river was beautiful as well. The trees lining it had roots that intertwined. The waters were clear. The road dipped down as we approached the crossing. Since there has been so little rain in months, we could cross and then pop up the other side.

As we wound our way through these roads, we had birds chirping and singing...and scents of spring...the warm earth, new growth on trees, with some hints of last fall's leaves still in the air occasionally. The sun was warm and everything was just delicious.

The little towns we went through were quaint: Comfort (great name isn't it?) had older cottages, Waring, and then Sisterdale with a little cafe and a winery, complete with painters out front. Next to the winery were two burros, very friendly looking for food and a little pat or two.

The last twenty or so miles were all farmland. We saw goats, sheep, cattle, (some great big longhorns and longhorn calves), horses and even a farm devoted to rescuing animals....A couple of kids were on the road riding horses....

As we came into town we were famished. The first restaurant we saw we stopped at...I got the cowboy burger....a big ole burger with cheese, bacon and lots on BBQ sauce on it...I think I will make these when I get home.

Mileage:64 warm and wonderful miles.

Day 29-Kerrville

Rest days....I like them a lot. After a rest day, the freshness of getting out on my bicycle is back and I am ready to roll. This morning, I went to church with two of the other women. On the way back we got breakfast in the Hill Country Cafe a great little cafe in the old part of town . As we walked back we saw a bookstore. Yeah! It is just fun to wander around. I got a book for the group, "The Glass Castle".

Our three mile walk back was so nice. It was cool and pleasant. Having a different movement was great!

The remainder of the day was just very relaxed with not too much to report. I feel rested and ready for the next days.

Day 28 Heffalumps and woozles

Today, for me started out at 5:13 AM, when I awoke to the wind making our doors rattle. I closed my window, which had let in fresh Texas night air as well as the sound of coyotes howling in the distance. My cabin mates, must also have closed theirs about that time, because the rattling subsided and I fell back to dreams, not too unlike those of Pooh Bear.

An hour later I awoke and the day got started. Peggy, had gotten tea started, and we all dressed, got our stuff pulled back together, applied our sunscreen, took our luggage out to the trailer, and then our bicycles out near the house, where we went into it's warmth and the smells of coffee and breakfast. I don't think i will ever tire of the oatmeal that Linda makes. It is rich and delicious, and with scrambled eggs and today leftover roasted veggies from last night it made for a full stomach (kind of like Winnie the Pooh when he ate honey at Rabbit's....I however was able to fit through the door).

The wind was gusty as we headed out, but at our backs and it all in all didn't seem too bad. The roads were empty, the day was still just starting and the sun was angled and casting shadows. It was cool and beautiful. We soon had to turn and the wind became a little more of a crosswind, as we made our way down a country road. Our first hill was steep, but the wind was at our back and it felt as if there was a strong hand scooting us up, all we needed were sails and we would not have needed to pedal at all! We got to the top and had some downhill and then the wind became capricious....once again a blustery day....Unbekownst to me, the wind this day would be strong enough to close down San Antonio Airport....reported gusts to sixty miles per hour. I, at the top of the hill just knew that gust would come from one side and then suddenly the other, shoving me here and there, making me thankful, that this road had almost no traffic on it. I was telling myself that this would be a day to practice how to ride with strong wind. As we came around a bend, I saw two bicycles about fifteen feet over on grass, with the two women who belonged to those bicycles in the grass beside them. Several of us were riding together and so we stopped....the wind had taken one, Peggy and blown her off the road, but she hadn't fallen, and then the other, Elizabeth who had travelled to where the bikes were with the gust of wind and it had toppled her onto some rocks, bruising and scraping here. Aside from those injuries, she was OK, but it gave me pause and I decided that such wind, was a little too challenging for my skills and I waited with her for the SAG. We got a ride with the SAG,and headed down toward Medina. En route, another woman, Lois S had a flat, so we stopped to help. While there, we got a call from yet another woman who was behind us, that someone had alerted her that one of our cyclists was down...so we headed back up the hill.

Two other women had been blown off the road onto what little shoulder there was. One remained upright and the other was blown over and she had a concussion....this was a a brutal wind.
I was glad that I was in the SAG. We got eventually got this woman to the hospital in Kerrville, so that she could get completely checked out...better safe than sorry....my motto of the day.

The afternoon was just nice, getting settled into our layover hotel, the YO Ranch Resort Hotel. It has an interesting lobby....lot's of animals....those who have visited the taxidermist....I will have to take some pictures....it is remarkable. The chandeliers are made from branding irons....hey we are in Texas!

Mileage not really sure how much I did....but it should have been 51 I think today I will just count that....they weren't all on the bike, but riding in that wind must count for something!!!

Day 27 Vanderpool

Well, for any of you who are wondering, the hill country of Texas is beautiful. We were on country roads all day with minimal traffic and lots of.....you guessed it.....hills. There was still chip seal pavement, but some of our group has decided that we can grade it...A is quite smooth....F is...not....most of our day was on A or B...with a few short distances on the F....

That said, we had some big hills we climbed.....about a mile or so with a 6-10% grade. As is usually the case with hills, when you get to the top you have great views of the surrounding countryside...The vegetation has changed so drastically and there are deciduous trees, that are that wonderful bright green of new leaves and the evergreens, that are a dark green, that is the perfect backdrop for the spring green.

Vanderpool, is a very small town, and there are plenty of ranches en route. We saw our first dead armadillo....it had been dead a while...an area with a lot of dead deer (road kill), some road kill turkey vultures...oh dear...I am just giving you all the dead stuff....let's see...cattle with their calves, sheep with their lambs, horses with their foals....it is spring after all.

We saw an unusual sign for hog traps....and one of the women mentioned this where she had stopped for a snack in Leakey....and a fella' said that he and his brother had trapped 150-200 wild pigs last year. They are a problem for the cattle ranchers and will attach cattle...one of the women, who is from Hawaii said they needed to get some luau's going:) apparently the trapped animals are used as dog feed....

Well, enough about the human interest for the area. We got to our cabins in Vanderpool....a small campsite with seven or eight cabins. These were very nice and a different setting from a hotel, was relaxing and fun. Dinner was inside at the house on site, and was pot roast...got me to wondering if Peter had made a pot roast...I had shown him before I left....I will have to ask.

Mileage: around 39 green and lovely miles.