Yesterday's ride covered close to 350 miles and showed us out of the state of Louisiana with our destination for the night in the first green space we spotted on the Lone Star state map near Route 190: Angelina National Forest.
Waking up to sunshine is a welcome thing after the storm and dreariness of the past two days. James started the day with giving the bikes a once over finding that our high speed entry and exit from New Orleans had burned off about a half quart of oil from each bike. Good thing we purchased that extra quart back when we changed the oil in Virginia. Breakfast, writing and packing took us a while and soon we found ourselves 6 hours into the daylight without a mile under us; time to get moving, 250 miles to Austin.
A backroad in Texas ain't the same as back home. Our backroad policy has several motivations behind it: lower speeds and thus better gas mileage, less traffic, more twists and turns, and being less abusive on us. In Texas the speed limit on "backroads" is still 65 and often is a straight line for miles. Good for covering mileage and though it's definitely not anything near an Interstate, it's also nothing like the bliss of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I think we've been a bit spoiled.
Today's route took us through one of the biggest college campus's either of us has ever seen: Texas A&M University in College Station. After 400 plus miles of small towns over the past day and a half we were greeted by a city limit sign indicating a population of 68,000 or so. Our empty two lane state highway turned into 6 lanes and we were surrounded by traffic playing the choreographed dance of stop and go from stoplight to stoplight. We agreed to make a pass through campus to check out the "sights" and found ourselves in front of a huge library named after one of those guys in that there oval office.
In working with the info we could gather from the eastern Texas map page and the Austin inset we entered Austin on Route 71 figuring it would be easiest to start on big roads and home in on our home to be: my Aunt Nancy and Uncle Bill's house. After a few phone calls and some dumb luck we found our way in the dark and pulled into the driveway.
Home cooked food? Heck yeah.
A warm shelter? Sweet.
A non vibrating cushy seat? Excellent.
Now it's time to chill.
-Colin
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