We had breakfast in the hotel's restaurant, which is just code for big room to socialize with more Motor Maids! I finally found my ACMM girls, Lynne, Christine, Elizabeth and a couple new ladies I hadn't met yet, Janet G. and Kathy G. It was great to see them, oh how I've missed those folks!!! I visited with them a bit, gave them a pair of my Texas earrings, and promised to stalk them, I mean see them, later.
Janet had written to the Chamber of Commerce from Florida and they sent her lots of great information on Kerrville and surrounding areas. This info included maps with suggested rides. We decided to go with option #4. It wasn't the 3 Twisted Sisters because we didn't have enough time to travel those 228 miles before registration but it was a shorter version, under a hundred miles. We had already been warned to make sure we fueled up because sometimes finding a gas station out there was not always easy.
We headed out of the hotel on 27, found 16 and away we rode. 16 South is a gorgeous road, with lots of really nice curves, the speeds ranged from 10 miles an hour to 70, so quite a range. The hills were awesome, traffic was light and we were loving it.
We stopped by a lake to take a few photos, for proof Texas does have hills, and Janet lost
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| Janet removing her helmet, losing her earring. |
We tried to find it, and I mean "We tried". Tricia tried using the method her Dad taught her, almost like a CSI detective looking for evidence, going back and forth over the area in rows. Except on those shows they always find their clues and solve the mystery. We didn't have that kind of "luck" though I think we tried for at least as long as a CSI show runs. We couldn't find the earring....and we practically had to kidnap Tricia to make her get back on her bike and give up the search! She did threaten me if I took a picture of her on the ground searching, they'd have to send out a search party to locate my body, hence no picture of that activity shall be included anywhere on this blog.
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| Our beautiful Janet, great riding partner who never complains. I should be like her....if only..... |
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| Janet and I by the lake. Tricia wouldn't let us photograph her. Probably afraid of the caption I'd add. Ha ha. |
Along the way we passed Buffalo ranches, cattle ranches, and lot of creeks, almost all of them totally dry. The ones that could overflow, have flood gauges posted beside them.
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| Flood gauge for creeks, even though almost all creeks were dry to the creekbed. |
Tricia loved this little town because of it's name. She told us her Mom used to talk about Utopia. So we stopped at a local feed store and went in to buy some paraphernalia with that name on it. We found some great cards, and Tricia bought a book from a local author, already signed.
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| Tricia in Utopia. |
The clerk suggested we go to Lost Maple State Park, back the way we'd come, so we headed off in that direction.
We may not have taken the right route, but when we stopped to discuss what we'd do, we found this really cool fence. It's not so sturdy as to keep anything in or out, but interesting for sure.
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| Stick post fence. |
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| Crooked sticks, posing as fence posts. |
Upon closer inspection, we found out what the fence was holding back....
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| Texas wild flowers! |
Texas takes littering seriously, so be forewarned.
We didn't think we'd have enough time to visit the park, so we rode back down 187 to 337, up 83 N to 41 East which took us back to 27 and into Kerrville.
83 N and 41 East didn't have many curves, just long straight stretches. 83 had some nice hills to ride up. We saw lots of ranch gates, but we never saw the actual ranch places from the road. On 41 we found the heat we'd been dreading. 41 N, where we picked it up off 83, was higher ground, and it was HOT. Just hot air blowing on us...hot, hot, hot....we sure were glad when town came into view knowing we could rip our helmets off soon and get in a nice icy cold shower. 41 was also dusty, so dusty and hot.
When we returned to the hotel, I moved out and I took photos of my new room, I'll put them on a separate blog post.
We registered, picked up our goodie bags, socialized - yup again, bought some raffle tickets for the 50/50 and silent auction items. Florida had a district meeting at 8, so we attended that until 10 and the day was over before we knew it. Yikes time was already flying by way too fast.
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| Our 12 Red Ribbons (1st time convention attendees). |
This was an awesome ride for me. Texas does have some beautiful hills. I want to publicly thank Coleen and Tricia for helping me look so hard for my earring it was a sapphire and diamond chips and matched a ring and necklace I have had for years. I had just bought them right before the trip because they were 60% off but I had waited several years to do so. I guess I was not meant to have them boo hoo.
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