Saturday March 7, 2015

It was a cold night, although there was a wood burner in the barn the temperature dropped and the fire went out during the night. We huddled under piles of blankets and I stayed warm, but I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. I felt I was a kid again with the only source of heat in the house being the fireplace downstairs. I hated getting out of my warm bed.  We eventually got up and had breakfast and said our farewells to Carol at 10:00.

The first 30 kms were along rural farm roads. It was a cool morning, but good cycling weather. We chatted to a couple of roadies, who told us not to take Hwy 290 to Austin. We did take it for a little while today, but after today\’s ride we will stick with the ACA map to Austin. We merged on to the Hwy 290 and for the first 10 ks on the road we had a wide shoulder. After Giddings, we lost the shoulder and the highway was quite busy, but the cars for the most part gave us plenty of room, it was a busy road and we were glad to make the left turn on to Hwy 21. This was a quieter road with a variable shoulder which took us to Bastrop. We passed the Bastrop State Park which still showed the results of a massive fire that devastated Bastrop. In 2011 Bastrop was surrounded by a massive \’complex\’ fire. They had suffered through 4 years of drought and in September 2011 “the perfect storm” hit Bastrop. First there was the drought, add a windstorm with winds of 35 to 45 mph which blew down trees onto power lines, the sparks lit the dry grounds and the winds very quickly blew the fires. There were six or seven separate fires, the city had to close three out of the four roads, only one exit road was safe to leave the area.  Over 1,600 homes were lost, fortunately only 2 lives were lost, 32,000 acres were burnt.

The downtown of Bastrop escaped the fire. However, the fire drew attention to Bastrop and it is now being renewed as a place to visit, apart from the State Park, downtown Bastrop is reinventing itself as an artsy place to visit. As we cycled towards our hotel we noticed the downtown Main Street was very attractive, we decided to stop and visit. There are a number of gift shops, and art galleries, it is a very nice place to  visit. The people are really friendly as well. As we stopped at the traffic light to decide which way to go a couple asked if we needed directions, when we told them we liked the look of the downtown, they told us of a great place to eat catfish and shrimp. The second person that stopped and chatted to us invited to her place for a warmshower, if her parents weren’t arriving for the night we could have stayed with her. The third person told us more about the fire.

Spend some time in Bastrop it is lovely and so are the people.  As we made our way back towards the motel, we spotted the back road with some older buildings which had more antique shops and restaurants.

We crossed the Colorado river on the old bridge, which has a wide cycling and walking path.

Lovely motel, recently refurbished, very clean and right next door to a Wal-Mart, where we could get our dinner.