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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Mileage update.....

So, I was sitting thinking while updating my blog with the latest little trip. I have been back on motorcycles since December of 2006. As of this week it has been 2 1/2 years back on the bike. I was kind of curious what my open road mileage was. I know what my odometer says on the Russian, it puts me in the neighborhood of 20,000 miles. The R90 has not had a working odometer between when I got it, and May. Between may and now I have put around 1800 miles on it. guessing at 400 miles per month for commuting, I would put it in the neighborhood of 1200 miles of commuting on the R90 before the odometer fix.

What I ball-parked was about 14,000 over the road miles in 2 1/2 years by mapping out the routes to the major trips I have taken over the past couple years. My total mileage, including commuting should come up somewhere around 24,000 miles in the past 2 1/2 years. That is actually not that bad really. I think I need to do something about it though. Time for another trip.

TTFN

Dave

Back in one piece

The return trip was fun. This was just a short little run to get Angela's legs under her for what a road trip would be like. It was just a little jaunt up to Stephenville, TX and back. I think the highlight of the trip had to be when we first rolled in. After 170 or so miles, not a long day one, we pull up in front of the hotel and she slumps across the tank of her bike. It was kind of cute. In one day she had almost doubled her total mileage on the bike. When we started off she had ridden about 100 miles total around town. At the end of the first day, she had put in 170 miles in about 5 hours. To top that off, she did it on a Suzuki GZ250. That is the little cruiser that competes with the Honda Rebel. That is a decent ride on a full size bike, but on the little Suzuki it was a beating.

Here is the shot of her on her tank:



When we stopped in Hamilton for Angela to get gas on Day 1, she found the cutest thing. I was standing in front of the store and I got a text from her. It confused me a bit, because I thought I knew where she was. It just said, come look what I found. When I got inside, she was pointing at this display and giggling. I almost peed myself when I saw it. I got a quick shot with my phone so I could share....use your imagination. We wanted to bring one back, but it probably wouldn't have survived the heat.

Here is the popcorn on a cob:



I think this was my first clue that she had slipped into vibration induced psychosis.


The trip back today was fairly uneventful, except for me missing my turn to get on US281. We ended up going over to this little town called Meridian. When I figured out that we were in the wrong spot, we cut back over to 281 so we could head home. We got to stop at this little place called Hard Eights in Stephenville. It is an awesome little BBQ shop that Kel and I found on our way back from Hot Springs a couple years ago. Yes, they are still as good as I remember.

Here is us in front of Hard Eights:



While we were there, we had one of the guys running the pit take a quick shot of us together next to our bikes. It had to be done, I guess.

The little "detour" that we took on Highway 6, allowed us to go through this area called Cranfill's Gap. It is westbound on FM22 from Meridian, TX. It is not incredibly high, but it is very pretty. All in all, it was worth the 45 mile detour.

The rest of the trip back was uneventful. We pretty much ran straight through because we were kind of running from the Texas summer "cold front" that was moving south. That means it was around 85 degrees. The problem is that when the 85 degree air hits the 102 degree air, you tend to get snap thunderstorms and high erratic winds. We did manage to make it home in one piece though. It was a very nice ride. I think I want to do it again.

Here is our return route:


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Dublin on the 4th of July.

This was a shining example of "The best laid plans, and all that jazz". This little trip was originally conceived as a good excuse to get a friend of mine out on her new bike and get dome road miles under her. The original plan was to take off this morning from Austin and go to Dublin, TX to get a Dublin Dr Pepper (look it up, ya'll). We roll about 160 miles in heat ranging from 98 when we left to about 102 when we rolled into Dublin. When we get there, the significance of the date becomes very obvious to me. It is the 4th of July, everything is closed. The only thing that I noticed open as we rolled through town was a restaurant that looked abandoned except for the flashing open sign. I just decided to roll us on to Stephenville to hit the hotel. Depending on how we are feeling tomorrow when we get to Lampasass, we might come back through Lago Vista and Marble Falls. That would mean 1431. We are going to call the ball on that one in Lampasass, because I want to make sure we are not too beat from the heat, and make sure she has her confidence up for that ride. The road isn't that difficult, but it is very high stakes and doesn't give you much time to rest.

Here are a couple shots from the day. Didn't end up taking many pics, mostly a couple shots when we got into the hotel. Hopefully I will be able to get some more tomorrow on the way home.

Here are the shots:





Here was our route:


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Have fun, I will close out tomorrow night when I get home.

Dave