Wanted to mention yesterday the community groundswell of support in this area against a border wall inside Big Bend NP – posters, postcard makings, gatherings….

Sundays, as I’ve mentioned, are typically great days to cycle. And this was one of those days. 57.7 miles, 1717’. Of course, other factors made today a memorable cycling day, too: rest day yesterday, E/SE tailwind, lovely cloud cover albeit a chilly start at 43 degrees and the super smooth asphalt at the Presidio County Line. Nice coffee stop in bustling town of Alpine with their weekend of Dark Sky Festival and Rock & Gem Show. Interesting mountains and geology, desert blooming cacti, live small desert fox scurrying to the bushes, roadkill: large cow elk, many deer, snake, javelina. It’s also been interesting the past few days to cycle from Del Rio at about 1000’ elevation on the Rio Grande to above 5000’ elevation of the high desert Basin & Range region.

Today our 8am start was cancelled due to high winds – it was an ok direction from N/NE but too strong and gusty especially on hwy 90 again all day with 70mph+ vehicles and semi-trucks. Enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the local Ferguson Motors Cafe & Coffee. And then drove to Marathon, our destination today; dropped off gear at Airbnb and on to Big Bend National Park. Even with dust-filled skies, it was worth the long day of driving. Amazing geology and dipped our toes in the Rio Grande.

Since Jody has been so great as our support driver, wanted to give a shout out to our son Peter who at 17 years old in 2015 was our first bicycling support driver. Definitely not easy to hang with one’s parents all summer long as a “rising senior” in high school, but he did do a great job and saw a big part of the middle section of the U.S. And hey, turned 18 in Fort Scott, KS! Thanks again, Peter, for supporting your parents during the long summer of our first TransAmerica bicycle ride! ❤️

Definitely gone from the verdant, river-, creek- and spring-filled land of the Hill country! Into the open, arid, flat high desert of western Texas. Lots of railroad tracks from the early companies in the 1800s building railroads and getting access to the CA gold rush …. of course way later than native Americans (4200 year old pictographs in the area), European & Mexican explorers and missionaries.

60 miles 2260’ for me to Langtry and 83.8 miles 3782’ for Tom and Steven to east of Dryden. Jody then drove us in to the town of Sanderson for the night. There was nowhere else to stay for many miles! Hwy 90 west and NW from Del Rio was smooth with wide shoulders and courteous, very fast traffic. Cloud cover most of the morning but the heated up to 90. A super helpful S/SE tailwind put us at 15.5 avg mph for the day. Only rough/chipseal section was about 15 miles in the middle of the ride. Very little civilization out here, but lots of Border Patrol agents in pick ups, a blimp, and communication/ satellite stations. Tried to see the Rio Grande in Langtry, but water level is very low so couldn’t see the water which was far away anyway, but the canyon is big.

79.4 miles & 1494’ elevation gain and actually lost more elevation than we gained today since we are now at the Rio Grande (!) and out of the Texas Hill Country as of this morning. We cycled through 4 of 9 regions of the Texas Hill Country, each region defined by its rivers. Now we are into a much drier SW Texas.

We were on three roads today with a lot of chipseal, still! Bones usually don’t get a workout cycling, but I think my bones are much stronger and denser after cycling on Texas roads! We did find a few smooth spots today, and thankfully the last 5 miles into Del Rio were nice….. as we watched so many jets overhead from Laughlin Air Force Base. And most thankfully, we enjoyed dry cloud cover all day and a super helpful SE tailwind. The first 18.5 miles were into the wind since we traveled due south out of Camp Wood, but it was first thing in the morning, so the wind wasn’t too bad yet. Then we turned west all day.

For most of Texas, we’ve seen very high 8’ fences for keeping in animals for private hunting. Only 5% of Texas is public lands. We’ve seen miles and miles and miles of high fences. A big part of the Texas economy is private game hunts for exotic animals like the ones we saw today – emu, scimitar oryx (a large antelope from North Africa!) and 4-6 small Axis deer (originally from India & Sri Lanka). The Axis deer we saw were startled by us and a vehicle so started chasing back and forth across the road as we approached, trying to get away, and attempting to jump over the 8’ high fences on each side. It was traumatic watching them jump – not high enough, hit the fence, collapse and run across the road to the other side and do it again. 😢

Huge long lightning and thunderstorms last night. Camp Wood received 4” of rain! Thankfully our route, all on one road, was not waterlogged or flooded. 31.9 miles & 2428’ (in the first 26 miles!) Two big climbs today that were gorgeous, albeit foggy and constantly misty wet and mostly (not all 😊) bumpy roads again. The expansive Texas hill views might have been even more spectacular without the clouds but pretty amazing. At times reminded me of the Gorges de la Nesque cycle in southeastern France, except this was a lot more hilly. Given how tired I was after yesterday, amazed at how good I felt today. Nice to finish early, enjoy some bbq lunch, do laundry and relax. We’ll cook in tonight in our nice Airbnb.

First a shout out to our daughter Clara and her hubby Alex on their 8th wedding anniversary today. We love them so much and are proud of the amazing life they have created and continue to create together.

The 81 miles 3989’ were hard today! First 30 miles to Kerrville were mostly on ranch roads which were beautiful with no traffic, but chipseal and wind and constant mist made the morning harder than it should have been. Stopped at Starbucks and on again with more of the same. The scenery through west hill ranches and up the Guadalupe River, then the South Fork of the Guadalupe River was beautiful and idyllic if you didn’t notice the still apparent devastation and destruction from the 30’ floods just last July that killed many people and destroyed a lot of property. We cycled by many riverside camps including Camp Mystic. Google the sad tragedy when 13” of rain dumped in 4 hours in the middle of the night in the mountains above the river.

Thankfully Jody surmised our exhaustion after several check-ins along the route. My body felt beat up from the road surfaces today and the headwinds when we were headed south several times today. Jody, after having scouted the additional distance and location of our very rustic cabin in the woods, waited for us at the Lost Maples store and offered us a ride late in the afternoon (to save an additional 4 miles up and over a big pass!)! We all gladly loaded our bikes and called it a day!

Two short mileage days in a row for sightseeing LBJ’s home territory. Visited LBJ’s boyhood homesite last evening and the Visitor’s Center with a lot of information about his upbringing and career.

37.5 miles 2368’ beautiful short hilly ride through the Texas hill country to the cute German town of Fredericksburg. A bit of head and cross winds but great cloud cover with no rain. And just like that (!), we are half way done with our journey at over 1500 miles!! 👏 💥 Staying in a lovely Airbnb tonight in downtown.

Dinner tonight with friends Shelley & Chris Pieper who drove in from Kerrville. We raised our 3 kids together during Montessori school days. We enjoyed authentic German food in this haven of German immigrants. As early as the mid-1800s, the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas set up a safe community for the influx of Prussian immigrants. This town also hosts one of the largest Oktoberfest celebrations in the U.S.

Nighttime and morning severe thunderstorms necessitated a TST meeting at 7am and resulted in a 2 hour delayed start this Sunday morning out of Austin. I didn’t mind too much as very wet stormy cycling isn’t my idea of fun, and it provided the chance to catch up on bookkeeping. However, Sunday mornings are typically a gorgeous cycling day, and the route was to take us on 20 miles of a gorgeous, but now notoriously busy, two lane road with no shoulders. The later the start, the more traffic.

In addition to the storms, the Cap10, the largest running event in Texas, was happening in downtown Austin with 25,000 runners! We spent quite a bit of time yesterday evaluating our planned route cycling out of town due to the event’s conflicting running route. But in the end Louise Joy, my college mate, assured us that taking the riverfront path west out of town would be no problem. And that’s how it went! Fun to see the miles and miles of runners/walkers but always slow navigating into and out of big cities.

The 50.0 miles, 3878’ was a very full, humid West Hills of Texas country kind of ride. We missed any serious rain; winds from south and east were mostly favorable; I did have to slow down quite a bit on downhills due to xwind; roads were mostly dry; drivers on the narrow, no shoulder roads abided by their TX motto of “friendly” except for one angry young man in a red pickup traveling the opposite direction who felt the need to slow down and yell at us to “get off the … road!” I just gave him my usual happy wave. Wildflowers are still beautiful and abundant, and many cacti are blooming. Going to try and dash out and visit LBJ’s home here in Johnson City.

Wow when you’ve been in small town America cycling, the big cities seem even bigger!! We switched up our rest days to stay an extra day here (rather than previously scheduled Fredericksburg). We got our bikes serviced and saw Kathy’s Georgetown classmate, Louise Joy, and her family on a tour boat on Lady Bird Lake to watch the bats come out from under the South Congress Bridge to feed for the night. Among many events, it’s pretty much “the” event in downtown Austin between March and October when the bats are visiting from Mexico. Louise brought yummy tacos from Torchy Tacos for our dinner! Thank you Louise, Gary, Clare & Susie for the Texas hospitality.

We’ve spent quite a bit of time today figuring out how to navigate around the 49th anniversary of the Cap10 running event tomorrow morning which brings in 25,000 participants and basically shuts down downtown. And rain is forecast. Stay tuned!!

This morning Jody drove us 6 miles north from LaGrange back to the route up the large highway with construction that we cycled yesterday. As we were unloading shortly after 7am, I noticed I had a fourth flat tire! 😩 This time on the front, and the culprit was another very tiny metal wire from a road sweeper or a steel belted radial remnant! Quick fix again with Steven’s help and on the road again. The first 38 miles were generally lovely country roads and 13 miles were in Buescher & Bastrop State Parks with some steep rollers, great road surfaces, no dogs and no traffic. But then the roads changed to no shoulder and lots of traffic with huge distribution/data center construction, and I called it quits! Jody had been graciously checking on us several times during the day, so I called it a day and hopped in! The boys of course kept going into downtown Austin. 53.4 miles 2326’ (boys 72.1 & 2800’)

Checked into our Airbnb apartment, and the boys took our bikes in for a previously scheduled tune up at an Austin bike shop. Now a day off!! 😊 Rest, buy some new bike shorts, and sightsee a little (I’ve visited Austin multiple times before so feel a little less pressure to see the sights in the capital).