Thursday March 12. 2015

We left the motel at 9:30, and the sun was out. It was a little chilly, we had our light jackets on and leggings. After a couple of hours, the jackets and leggings came of and we were cycling in sunny, warm weather. Finally the sun is out and maybe we should have put some sunscreen on.

It was another hilly ride, but not as hilly as yesterday. We arrived in Fredericskburg at about 2:30pm. There is a Tourist Information Centre, where we found out about hotels and campsites.

Fredericksburg is a very pretty tourist town. It is spring break, and a lot of the motels are booked and expensive.

We headed out of town by about a 2kms and found an Econo Lodge, the first price was more expensive than the Motel 8 downtown, so I said it was too expensive. She asked if we had any discounts, AAA or military. I told her Ralf was ex-military, but Canadian service. We got a military discount! Which made it cheaper than the Motel 8. Bonus

We got settled in, by the time we had got ourselves organized it was too late to go back downtown for a wander around. We did go over to a big supermarket called HEB. It had the most amazing cheese selection we have seen in ages. We stood their drooling, we really miss cheese, it is difficult to carry, we have to eat it all in one go.

We have a warmshowers tomorrow in Kerrville, they will be available after 3:00pm. It is not too far to ride, so we have decided to have a wander around downtown Fredericksburg tomorrow.

Things are looking up we haven’t had a dog chase us since before Austin, the weather is improving, and we are really enjoying Hill Country, Texas.

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.

Tuesday March 10, 2015

We were late up this morning. We had some chores to do, primarily washing. We had bought some NixWax wash for our jackets and some waterproofing stuff for the jackets as well. I waterproofed each jacket separately, hopefully it will help during the next rain we encounter. The weather was overcast, but warm and I was able to hang all the jackets outside to dry.

We eventually left for our sight-seeing of the Capitol building and surrounding downtown at about 12:30.

The Capitol Building and grounds were really nice and grand. Ralf took loads of pictures, I have created a gallery below.

One of the funniest statues was the school children. The info on the plaque stated that there were six children, there were only five. Typical school outing you always lose one kid!

The outside of the building had a replica statue of liberty and on the building adjacent had the original Independence.

We walked to another store which may have had keen sandals, they did but not the cycling sandals. Behind the store was Castle Hill an area where grafitti is welcomed.

Austin also has the bicycle rental scheme we have seen in other major cities around the world.

We walked back to Hilary and Sam’s place wandering through the neighbourhood and through an area called Swede Hill, which had some interesting houses. This area (the east end) of Austin was the first area where black people were allowed to buy homes at the turn of the century. They were only allowed to buy and live in this area.

It is now changing some of the old houses are being converted or torn down and rebuilds. There were some very quirky houses.

We also discovered that the music festival South by South West starts in Austin this week-end. This is a festival where start-up bands and named bands play in Austin at a variety of venues. Some of them are free and others are charged. Ralf knew all about it, I was clueless. He wished he had known it was on and we could have planned on being in Austin during this time. However, accommodations are at a premium, even the youth hostels are booked.

Highway 35 runs through Austin, it is always busy.

Monday March 9, 2015

We woke up to pouring rain, with the forecast being for rain all day. We didn’t want to postpone again and miss the chance of the warmshowers in Austin, so with little discussion and a quick agreement we decided to take a taxi to Austin. Taking the taxi took the money we would have saved on the warmshowers, but neither of us wanted to cycle in the rain. The warmshowers hosts would not be available until 5:00pm which would mean we would be cold and wet while waiting for them to arrive home.

We left the motel late (11:00 a.m.) and took the taxi directly to an REI Store in Austin. I was hoping that they carried the Keen cycling sandals, but unfortunately, they have stopped stocking them. Never mind we did enjoy wandering around for a couple of hours. We were allowed to bring the bikes in the store and left them in the “care” of the cashiers while we wandered around. At one point Ralf noticed a young man (store-person) looking at the bikes. I went over to chat to him, he was looking at our set-up as he wants to do something like we are doing – “some day”. We chatted for a while about our trip and the gear we are carrying. We knew our bikes would be safe while he was hovering around.

After we had replenished on some of our stuff, we asked the cashier if we could pop next door and get some lunch. There was a café in the bookstore, we had a very expensive sandwich with a really good cup of coffee for lunch.

At about 4:30 pm we went back to our bikes and were ready to leave for our warmshowers house. However, there was another young couple checking out our bikes when we got back. This couple were planning their own road trip at the end of the month. Again we chatted about our gear and where we have been. They are planning to cycle from Texas to Oregon, starting at the end of March.

We arrived at Hilary and Sam’s place at about 5:15, they weren’t home yet, but Sam arrived home at about 5:30pm.

We had a lovely dinner with them and a great chat, it was a late night but they have invited us to stay an extra night so that we could visit the downtown of Austin and the State Capitol Building.

Sunday March 8, 2015

The forecast was for rain today, it had rained most of the night. Our warmshowers host for tonight in Austin is not available until after 12:00, which meant we could wait out the early morning rain and head out if it stopped.

As we prepared to leave we met another cyclist, coincidence – he is riding a Trek 520 the same as Ralf and he was a truck driver as well.

By 10:30 it had stopped raining and we headed out on wet roads with grey clouds hanging over us. We made our left turn onto Hwy 304 and it started to spit a little, not too bad the temperature wasn’t too cold. We spotted 3 large storage tanks with happy Blue Smiley faces on them and an older truck, it was raining a little heavier now, but the smiley faces made us smile. That is where we should have made our right turn towards Austin – we missed it.

We carried on cycling in the rain for another 19 kms. Ralf said he had to check the map and that is when we realized we had cycled 19 ks in the wrong direction. We turned around and headed straight back to Bastrop! 38.6 ks for nothing!

We paid for another night in the motel, this is killing our budget. However, there is washing facilities here and we desperately needed to get some clean clothes. We dried the bikes and cleaned the chains, although they are going to get wet and dirty again tomorrow – forecast for more rain.

I called the warmshowers host who graciously offered us a bed for tomorrow night and the next night. Hilary even offered to drive out and pick-us up, but we have paid for the room and I didn’t think we would get a refund.

The washing got done and Ralf went to do the shopping for our food for dinner.

We turned the clocks back last night and as usual it is messing with my sleep pattern. I really have no idea why we keep moving the clocks forward and backwards. It is now darker in the morning and lighter at night. The doesn’t help our early morning rides – not that we are having many of those right now as we are not leaving until after nine o’clock when it is a little warmer.

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.

Friday March 6, 2015

I felt much better when I woke up this morning. The sun was out although very cold. Ralf wasn’t feeling very well today. Maybe it is something we ate.

The ride today was lovely, the first 30 kms were along Hwy 105, a big wide shoulder and not too much traffic.

We are in cattle country, lots of good rolling hills. We spotted this \”small\” BBQ for sale, it can be yours for $350,000.00. It came with one ton of BBQ sauce!

We drove through Brenham and connected with Hwy 290, this road had a wide shoulder as well, but the traffic was much heavier.

We made our left turn into Burton, which has a museum with the oldest working cotton gin in Texas.

We called our warmshowers host, who was in Burton at the time, she gave us directions to her house and we carried on for another 12 kms to her lovely homestead. We are staying above the barn, it reminds me very much of peddlars rest in New Zealand.

Carol is a lovely lady and hosts hundreds of cyclists. The accommodation is above her implement shed, it has 5 single beds and one queen bed. There is a small kitchen and a wood fireplace. The bathroom has an old claw foot tub in it with an old fashioned shower head. Carol cooks dinner and she provides us with food to cook our own breakfast.

We helped pick up some dead wood for her.

Ralf had a nap before dinner, he says he aches all over and is tired, I think we both had a bug.

Thursday March 5, 2015

The wind howled throughout the night and the temperature dropped to below freezing! The wind speed was 25 to 35 kph all day and the early morning we had freezing rain, ice on the roads and cycling do not mix well.

I woke up with a migraine, and we decided to take a rest day. Our warmshowers host that we had set up for today is available for tomorrow, so it was a no-brainer not to cycle.

I took my Imitrex and slept until past noon. As usual with the imitrex they leave me feeling very lethargic and tired. Today after I had woken up and showered I had no energy, I attributed this to the drugs, but it may have been a bug. Ralf worked on the computer, and worked on his photos.

We went for a walk mid-afternoon, but it was still cold. Hopefully it will be warmer tomorrow.

Wednesday March 4, 2015

We woke up to a warm, humid day. Sheila had to leave for work at 6:00 am, we had said our farewells last night. We picked up Hwy 105 and headed towards Montgomery. We were going to stop at the Lake Conroe Cycling store so that I could replace a couple of inner-tubes. Cindy is also a warmshowers host and is a lovely lady. She took us for lunch and we spent almost 2 hours chatting to her.

By the time we got back on the road the wind had picked up and it wasn’t in our favour! Never the less it was a good ride.

We are in Texas cattle country, where the ranches are big and the entrances are bigger.

As we came into Navasota this crazy dog ran across four-lanes of traffic to chase us. I would never normally wish a dog any harm, but my first thought was I hope the stupid animal gets hit by a car. It almost got schmucked by a transport, but he ran back across the road and escaped injury.

The temperature dropped from a high of 23 degrees C to a low of -3 C at 10:00 pm – (75 (F) to 26 (F), brrr. Thank goodness for motels.

Tuesday March 3, 2015

A great day and a great ride. We had contacted a warmshowers in Conroe at the last minute. Sheila called us back and told us we would be welcome to stay with her, she told us she was a teacher and would be home around 5:00pm.

We only had a short ride to get to Conroe. We left the motel late at 10:45 and had a great ride to Conroe.

We spotted this flea market and Ralf stopped to take some photos.

The flea market was for sale and had all the stalls custom built for the market.

As Ralf was taking the photos a car stopped and a lady got out for a chat. When she discovered I had an English accent, she wanted me to speak to her Mum who was in the car. Of course, I obliged and I chatted to a lovely lady who has all the episodes of “As Time Goes By”!

We went through the City of Cut and Shoot, but could not find out why it was called Cut and Shoot.

Conroe is a large city with a very fast growing population, primarily due to the oil industry. A lot of the Head Offices of major oil companies are moving to Conroe. Conroe has the dubious claim to fame of inventing fracking.

However, Conroe has a lovely historic downtown and we spent some time wandering around the area. In 1912 there was a massive fire downtown which burned down a large number of the buildings.  An ordinance was passed that all new buildings would be made from brick.  Ralf had his beard trimmed in one of the many barber shops downtown.

We went to the Flag Park –

In December of 2005, Craig Campobella envisioned the flag park while passing the Montgomery County Library. This beautiful and unique vision was soon in the planning stages as Campobella sketched and researched early Texas History. After approaching the city with his idea of a park celebrating Montgomery County as the birthplace of the Lone Star Flag, Campobella asked Dave Clements, a well-known photographer, to get involved. Campobella designed the concept of the park, complete with the flags and a maquette of the statue that would be named the, “Texian,” while Clements began researching sources for funding. Between the two men, two different City Councils, two Mayors, hundreds of dedicated volunteers, and a five year planning process, the groundbreaking finally occurred in 2010 with the grand opening on April 21, 2011.

It is a lovely park located next to the Montgomery County Library

The bronze monumental sculpture, by award-winning sculptor Craig Campobella, captures the look of the average fighting volunteer during the Texas Revolution, portraying a veteran of the revolution after the Battle of San Jacinto and on the day the Lone Star flag was first unfurled. The 14 ft. bronze is full of symbolism, with 13 rocks under the left foot representing the 13 day siege at the Alamo, 342 marks in those rocks, one for each man massacred at Goliad, 18 buttons on his coat, shirt and pants; each standing for every minute in the Battle of San Jacinto. Under his right toe is a stone inscribed with the name, Santa Anna symbolizing the years of discomfort he continued to give the Republic of Texas

At about 2:00 pm we headed up Hwy 105 towards the warmshowers host, but stopped at a small café for lunch. Everywhere we stopped today people  chatted to us, Texans are very friendly.

The weather forecast was for rain, although there was some cloud cover, it didn’t rain. The temperature was 23 degrees C and the sun kept coming out. Only one dog gave chase, what more could you ask for.  All in all a good day.

The bonus was the wonderful warmshowers host. We went out to a Mexican restaurant with her – on Tuesday nights she meets up with friends for half-price margeritas and dinner. She asked if we wanted to go or stay at home. We opted for half-price margeritas!! It was a really nice evening. When we got back to Sheila’s house we talked until past 11:00 about her upcoming cycle trip with her daughter this summer. They are going to cycle the western coastline.

Sheila is a wildlife expert and assists in rehabilitating wildlife.  At the moment she is feeding baby squirrels.