Hill Country Escape Day 4

Today turned out to be a fairly light day due to incoming weather and general tiredness. Basically, today was a short ride over to Luckenback, TX. Spent an hour or so hanging out in town, had lunch there. Angela got to ride a bull (and yes, I got a picture)



After a bit of time in Luckenbach, we went down to Fredricksburg and visited the Japanese garden at the Nimitz museum, then had some coffee. After a little time hanging out at the cafe, we headed back for the hotel. We actually managed to get back right at 10 min before a hell beyond storm started up. It was bad enough that I could not see across the street.

We are going to try for the sisters again tomorrow, I guess.

Here is the route:


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Hill Country Escape Day 3

Today was a sleep late day. Not a whole lot of excitement. We ended up going for a bit of a ride through some familiar areas. The route we took ended up being one that we have ridden quite a number of times before, it was familiar enough that we could really let it hang out, but fast enough that we were not bored with it.

Watching the weather radar and watching out the window can be very disheartening. I can see on the radar that we are surrounded by thunderstorms, but the ground outside is dry. The wind is blowing like there is a storm in the area, but we are not seeing it at the hotel. I certainly want to make sure before I drag this crew up into the hills. There are too many places that a little rain could get fairly disastrous fast. If all goes well, we should be able to hit all 3 of the sisters tomorrow. It will be about 200 miles total, and there will likely be much whining. Worst case, it looks like Sunday is clearing up a bit, so that will likely be an option. Wish us luck on the weather.



Here is the route from today:


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TTFN,

Dave

Hill Country Escape Day 2

The day started off a bit slow. We had a nice leisurely breakfast at the hotel, and then took off into the hills. The first place we visited was the Mini Stonehenge. We got a few pics, but they have not been processed yet. I shot mostly film, and Kel shot a lot of Digital SLR. I will get those shots up as soon as we get around to going through them. We made some pretty good time through RR 1340. It was actually a very nice little twisty road. Highway 83 took us down to Leakey. I know that this is a touchy subject for some, but I think they might possibly have the most unfortunate high school mascot ever. This is, of course, the home of the Leakey Eagles...... something that nobody really wants flying overhead. Highway 83 is fairly long and straight, not a lot of excitement. We spent the rest of the run back to the hotel on nice twisty farm roads. There were a good number of them that were a bit more than we bargained for. There was a lot of twisting and turning, and some corners that were not really always a guaranteed win.

I think the high point of the trip came at this little town called Medina. We rolled in to have a little water and take a rest before the nastiness of TX 16 to Kerrville. As we are sitting in the parking lot having some water, a couple little teenage girls go scampering by chasing something. As Angela goes over to see what is going on, she notices that they are chasing a Luna moth.

Angela manages to rescue this poor little moth from the side of the street and get it over into the bushes so it is not out in the middle of the parking lot. After it made it to the bushes, I managed to get some fairly decent pictures of it. I will get those pictures up as soon as I get them processed.

I am looking at the weather to see what we have to look forward to over the next couple days, and it looks like we have a very good chance of rain every day left in the trip. This displeases me greatly. We have gone through one of the hottest and driest summers on record, and the weekend of our road trip is when the drought decides to break and give us rain. I wish it could have waited just three more days. That would have made things much better for all involved. We had a bit of other excitement, but I will leave the details of that for the wrap-up post.

Oh well, time to figure out where we are going tomorrow.

Here is the route from today:


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TTFN

Dave

The big yearly trip...

Well, due to the work mess I did not get to take the big trip this year. Instead, we got a room at the inn of the hills and invited a bunch of our riding friends to get rooms and join us. Then we can head out each day to run around the hill country and explore. The inn's website is http://www.innofthehills.com/. So far, Vern and Glenn, Kel, and Angela have shown up. We may have more coming in over the next few days.

I am on the R90, Angela is on the Ural.

Here is the route for the day:


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