The End is in Sight

Well, this one didn't go exactly according to plan but that's reality.  

No more pictures of interest or tales of interesting things we've seen.

We had intended to spend a couple of more days in Texas than we actually did, but the weather changed our plans.  Riding in the rain isn't fun and can be dangerous so we don't intentionally go out riding in the rain.  We had the option of sitting in the hotel room and watching it rain or leave and try to avoid the rain so we decided to start toward home but stay off the interstates, and use secondary roads to get a better view of the states we were passing through.

We managed to avoid rain of any consequence until yesterday afternoon around 3:00 PM.  We were traveling across Louisiana with soybean and cotton fields all around us.  We could see off in the distance that it appeared to be raining and we had already run through a couple of brief showers so we found a safe place to pull off and put on our rain suits.  We took off and about 10 minutes later hit rain which lasted for about an hour and a half. The last thirty minutes was pretty intense and even though we had rain suits on, we still got pretty wet.

All in all we had a good trip but it would have been more fun if the weather had been better and we could have spent a couple more days in the hill country of central Texas.

I should have mentioned at the beginning of this trip that if you click on the photos I have posted, they will go to full screen and look much better.

Buc-ees - A Mega Convenience Store

OK, you've probably already figured out from the title that I don't have any great pictures or tales to tell, a convenience store is just ho hum stuff right, well not when it's Texas sized.

We stopped to get gas at a Buc-ees convenience store in Bastrop Texas, the third largest store in the Buc-ees chain, and what a place, oh, and their no brand name gas was about twenty cents a gallon cheaper than we had been paying, and they don't post their gas prices on a sign by the road like most stations.  

48 gas pumps to start things off.  

When you get inside they have groceries, produce, snacks, a huge wall covered with fountain drink dispensers and Icee macines, Texas souvenirs, Buc-ees souvenirs, grilles, hunting supplies, home decorating items, patio furniture, picnic supplies and then there's the bathrooms.  

I wanted to take a picture of the men's bathroom but cameras in bathrooms can create quite a stir and I don't care to be in the middle of that kind of stir so you will have to take my word for it.  There were 25 urinals, about a dozen toilets and about two dozen sinks in the men's room.  There were hand sanitizer dispensers on the wall next to each urinal.  The floors and walls were all tiled and everything was clean.  

The ladies room was similar according to Jane, except for the urinals.

Here is what wikipedia has to say about the largest store in the chain which is located a few miles from the one we visited; 

In 2012, Buc-ee's opened its largest store in New Braunfels, Texas on Interstate 35. The New Braunfels travel center is the largest convenience store in the world at 68,000 square feet. The store features 120 fuel pumps, 31 cash registers, 4 Icee machines, 80 fountain dispensers, tubing and water gear for the Guadalupe River, and a farmer's market that features Grade 1 fruit and produce.

The New Braunfels, Texas store was named the 2012 "Best Restroom in America" by Cintas 

They also have a bit of a sense of humor about asking you to pick up after your dog if you walk it on their lawn...

This worthless bit of trivia is brought to you by the good folks at Rubber Duck Adventures, thanks for watching, looking, reading, following, whatever.

1 Great Ride, 2 Giraffes, 3 Sisters and more - Not necessarily in that order.

So let's get the "and more" part out of the way.  

We left Kerrville Texas to ride some great "motorcycle roads" that Jane had tracked down.  A few miles from Kerrville is the little town of Ingram Texas and in that town they have a life size recreation of Stonehenge, we didn't stop to get a picture of it but thanks to the internet I found the following picture of it.

A few miles down the road from Ingram, out in the boonies basically, we saw a field with a creation dubbed as thronehenge.  We couldn't resist taking a picture.  You frequently hear it said of someone that they are outstanding in their field, but rarely hear it said of someone that they are outsitting in their field, there's probably a very good reason for that....

A little farther down the road we came across the Double Creek Ranch and some of their old equipment on display.

This is some more of their equipment on display.

Now for the 3 sisters part of our day.  Jane found this area listed as a great place to take a motorcycle ride.  The ride included farm road 335 and ranch roads 336 and 337, dubbed the three sisters

Along the way we came by some interesting places.  The following wall ran along the roadside for at least a half a mile and had a large gate at the entrance with the name Las Palmas.  The wall was topped with broke glass bottles, presumably to discourage people from climbing over the wall. 

A quick internet search shows that this farm has a history of being a very modern Arabian horse breeding farm known as Gleannloch Farms.

A little farther down the road we found a ranch with a couple of giraffes, in Texas!  Actually there quite a few exotic animals in ranches all over the hill country in Texas.  They are kept on the ranches with eight foot high fences.  

Some of these ranches offer hunters a chance to hunt these exotics and not have to travel to Africa, which is the natural home for most of them.

Here is view of some of the roadway we traveled today.  There are some really nice hills in this part of the state.

Fredericksburg Texas - PBR Rodeo and Enchanted Rock

On Saturday night we went to a PBR (Professional Bull Riders) Rodeo. Thirty cowboys who are members of the PBR were there to ride bulls.  In order to receive a score for the ride, the cowboy must stay on the bulls back for eight seconds and must not touch the bull with his free hand.  The judges score a maximum of 50 points for the bulls performance and a maximum of 50 points for the cowboys performance.  After all thirty cowboys had ridden, there were only three qualified rides.  The judges selected seven of the cowboys who did not have qualified rides, to come back and ride in the final round with the three who had qualified rides.  In the end there were five qualified rides and two cowboys tied for first place with a score of 85.5 each.  

This picture was taken just before the color guard presented the US flag, the State of Texas flag and a couple of other flags which I could not identify. 

The cowboys were introduced one at a time and their home city and state were given.  Many of them are from Texas but there were a couple from Florida, one from Tennessee, a couple from Oklahoma and one from Australia.

This is about the best picture we were able to get of the cowboys in action, due to the light level the shutter speed was too slow to stop the movement of the cow and cowboy.

There was an event for the children to try their hand at riding a sheep.  The sheep are sheared but a wide strip is left un-sheared around the sheep's shoulders.  The children generally lay on their stomach on the sheep's back and wrap their legs around the sheep's belly and hang on for as long as they can.  The little boy and girl shown with the trophies were judged as having the best ride.  They appeared to be about 8-9 years old.  There were several as young as three years old.

On Sunday we rode from Fredericksburg out to Enchanted Rock State Natural Area.  This large outcropping of pink granite is a popular local hiking spot.  We however were not inclined to do any hiking on this day.

There were several folks climbing on the rock, a couple of them are near the upper right in this photo.

Hippos in Hutto?

When I have to tell you about concrete hippos in Texas, you can assume there wasn't much else to see or talk about for this part of our trip.

We left Shreveport this morning with skies heavily overcast.  It had rained during the night but when we left the hotel it was not raining and the road had dried up as well.  We headed west on I-20 for a couple of miles then headed south into Texas.  Around 11 AM we started seeing patches of blue sky and within a couple of hours we had mostly sunny skies with some scattered clouds.  At one point mid-afternoon we ran through a shower for about a half a mile.  The temperature dropped from 93 to 84 in about ten minutes, but within 30 minutes it was back up in the low 90's again.  

We traveled on US 79 all day and a few miles north east of Austin is the small town of Hutto.  For whatever reason this little town decided that concrete hippos would make fun decorations in front of businesses, homes, city government buildings etc.  The Chamber of Commerce sells all kinds and sizes of concrete hippos, some small enough to set on the corner of your desk to hold business cards and some about 18" high and 42" long which would probably require a couple of people to handle.  Some are unfinished concrete and some are painted up in various colors.  Here are a few of the reportedly 6,000+ concrete hippos residing in Hutto Texas.

This dalmatian like painted hippo was in front of the fire department.

This very large hippo was in a small park area across the street from some old business buildings.

This brown hippo was in front of the Chamber of Commerce office.

This hippo with the heart tattoo on the hip was in front of a business.

This "Regions green" hippo was in front of the local Regions Bank branch office.

Here is one possible explanation for hippos in Hutto;

According to local legend, it was in 1915 that a circus train stopped in Hutto at the depot to take on passengers, pick up and deliver mail and possibly take on water and fuel for the steam locomotive. The circus train workers also would have taken this opportunity to care for their animals. At some point during this historic layover, the hippo got out of the railcar and made its way to the nearby Cottonwood Creek. This caused much consternation for the circus workers. Local farmers and merchants watched the commotion in amusement and with interest as unsuccessful efforts were made to extricate the hippopotamus from the muddy waters of Cottonwood Creek. It is said that the Depot Agent, who at that time would have been Hal Farley, Jr., telegraphed the communities of Taylor and Round Rock that were eight miles to the east and west of Hutto to the effect of: “STOP TRAINS, HIPPO LOOSE IN HUTTO”. After much effort the hippo was prodded from the mud and water that resembled its natural habitat and was reloaded back onto the train car. Soon afterward the Hutto School adopted the hippopotamus as its mascot and as early as 1923 the hippo appeared on official Hutto High School graduation announcements. 

Phil, Willie, Jase, Jep and Uncle Si

We purchased a Bushtec trailer a couple of years ago and this is our first long trip pulling it.  These trailers are very well built and other than having to be a little more careful when backing up and dropping my fuel mileage by about 3 MPG, I don't know it's back there.

We've had a couple of tire failures on past trips and felt that they were attributable to overloading the bike with all our gear.  With the trailer we still take about the same amount of gear but 90% of it is in the trailer so there is very little weight on the bike other than the two of us.

We are running a little bit ahead of schedule, we were planning to spend the night in Monroe Louisiana but we got there about 3 PM and didn't feel like stopping for the day.  We did make a stop in West Monroe though to visit the Duck Commander / Buck Commander Store.

We didn't see any of the Robertson family but we saw them pictured in several different areas.  The store is actually in one corner of the "factory" featured on the Duck Dynasty TV show.  Jane posed next to a couple of the pictures of the cast members.

Jane and Uncle Si.

Jane and the whole Robertson crew.

Jane with Willie and Uncle Si.

This appeared to be a large painted wood carving of Jep.

We ended our day in Shreveport Louisiana.

2014 Bike trip to Texas

We are officially on vacation, finally!  

We left the house at 3:45 PM on Wednesday afternoon, got out of Chattanooga before the 5 o'clock rush and arrived in Tuscaloosa Alabama about 6:30 Central Standard Time.

Tomorrow it's off to Monroe Louisiana or farther west possibly.

Thanks for checking out our blog,  we will be posting most every day of the trip and have some pictures to share as we go along.  Later...

CATCH-UP TIME - LOWER ANTELOPE CANYON / GRAND CANYON / HOOVER DAM

I'm sitting in our motorhome in a parking lot / KOA campground in Las Vegas behind the Circus Circus Casino.  It's 107 degrees outside and about 85 degrees inside with both rooftop air conditioners doing all they can do.  Our big trip for this year is just about finished.  We stayed in town because Scot and Gina wanted to show the kids what the bright lights looked like and since the motorhome is our only means of transportation it made sense to park it in town.

About three years ago we visited the Upper Antelope slot canyon in Page AZ.  This year we decided to visit the Lower Antelope slot canyon.  You can see from the first photo below why they are referred to as 'slot' canyons, this narrow crack in the rock is the entry point to the canyon.  Once you get down inside the width of the canyon will vary from about 18 inches to as much as 10 feet.

In this canyon there were several sets of steps like these to get from one level to the next.  They are quite steep and usually don't have any handrails.

This Navajo girl was our guide through the canyon.  At a couple of different points on the trip she played songs on the flute which resonated in the canyon and sounded really restful.

The canyon walls are sculpted by water and wind over hundreds of years.  The lighting coming in from the narrow slot at the top highlights the shapes and colors.  The colors are not quite as vivid in this canyon as they were in the Upper Antelope but they are still very pretty, here are several different shots.

Here is our whole crew in one of the wider portions of the canyon.

This is the Lookout Tower at the east end of the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

Another view of the canyon from the eastern end of the south rim.

In the next two photos, the Colorado River is briefly visible, it is the mud red spot toward the right side.  In the second photo you can also see trails zig zaging across the lighter colored areas.

Here is a photo of our crew with part of the Grand Canyon in the background.

Just another pretty shot of the canyon.

After leaving Grand Canyon we traveled south to I-40 and then west toward Kingman AZ.  We got off I-40 and drove route 66 for a few miles.

On Wednesday afternoon we visited and drove across Hoover Dam and the new bridge.  It was about 104 degrees there and very little breeze.  I think we will be glad to be home, if for no other reason than to get out of this heat.  Yes, it's a dry heat, but it is still hot!

MODEL T FORD CLUB INTERNATIONAL - CANYONLANDS IV TOUR

Today's post is all about Model T Fords.  

As we drove through Kanab Utah we noticed that Main Street was blocked off and full to overflowing with old cars.  We found a place to park and walked back to check it out.  

Turns out it was the Model T Ford Club International's 57th annual summer tour outing.  There were 187 cars in attendance and all but a handful were some form of Ford Model T, there was a Hudson touring car labeled as a Model T on steroids and a couple of Model A's.  Some of the cars were extremely well detailed and some were not quite so slick.

They were having a hood ornament / radiator cap contest so there were some very unusual ones on display.

Between October of 1908 and May of 1927, Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company produced about 14.7 million Model T's in several various configurations (excluding Canadian built vehicles), here are a few examples, plus a few modified by their owners to suit their needs and tastes.  It should be noted that Henry Ford was said to have told folks they could have their car any color they wanted as long as they wanted black.  In reality his reason for insisting on black for many years, was that black dried faster than other colors so it was the quickest color to get through the assembly line.

This one was a very well done gray and black four door sedan.

This is a very well done maroon and black four door touring car.

This is a very nice maroon and black roadster pickup.

This was a very nice red and black roadster pickup with a matching pop-up tent camper with matching wood spoke wheels.

This red speedster was my favorite of the speedster cars.  These were not production vehicles, but over the years, some folks modified their Model T's to get more of a sports car feel.

This very pretty navy blue four door touring car didn't actually have any front doors, probably a very early model which are sometimes referred to as horseless carriages.

This was one of the nicest two door roadsters that I saw.  Lots of polished brass and very well detailed all around.

This was probably the nicest two door roadster which was also closest to the way it left the factory, the right color, the right wheels etc.

This is a very attractive four door touring car with interesting all white tires.