Wednesday March 11, 2015

Leaving Austin we are officially in Hill Country, Texas.

We were warned by Hilary not to cycle on Bee Caves Road, it is very busy and no shoulder. We had been checking on alternate routes last night, and couldn’t come up with anything feasible. We followed the ACA maps out of Austin and missed our turn and we made the next turn on to Bee Caves Road! At the second set of traffic lights going up the hill I recognized one of the street names that we had seen on google maps. We stopped and a roadie stopped and asked if we needed help. He gave us directions to get back onto the ACA maps and off we went avoiding Bee Caves Road.

The ride was hilly but it felt so good to stretch the legs on some hills. We seem to have been riding on flat roads for the last six weeks. Ralf laughed at me when I said I was enjoying the hills. When I checked my garmin at the end of the day – it said I had a new record for elevation gained – 1297 metres climbed.

Part of the route took us through hills and valleys with warning signs stating the road may be flooded. We came to one down hill and at the bottom the road was flooded. A car came in the opposite direction, and I told Ralf the water looked deep. He slowly went the downhill and cycled through the flooded road, the river was moving quite fast. He got about half-way across and the water took him and he ended up on the ground. I got of my bike and wheeled it through the water. The water was deep, clean and surprisingly not so cold.

We met two Canadians from Belleville that we stopped and chatted to. As we stopped Barc, (Barclay) said you must be from Barrie, Ontario. It stunned us for a second but he explained that he had met Adam, the cyclist from a couple of nights ago.

The scenery is getting to be very pretty, we saw a couple of road runners (birds) and whenever we stopped the birdsong was lovely.

Tonight we are staying at the Hill Country Motel, the room is clean, but the shower was filthy. I went to reception and told her the bathroom was dirty, so she came and cleaned it.