This ongoing series features a road diary by Ellen Satre as she and her husband, Lowell, cycle across the United States. Today’s installment finds the Youngstown couple in Texas.
By Ellen Satre
Special to the Metro Monthly
May 6, 2008: From Del Rio to Austin, Texas
The Texas landscape changed dramatically as soon as we bicycled east out of Del Rio. There was grass along the side of the road. Real grass. And trees. Green trees. Though we'd seen green vegetation at some of the higher elevations, it was still startling to see a more familiar kind of roadside scene. To be sure, there were occasional stands of prickley pear cactus, so we were not yet out of desert soil and climate, but we did gaze around at the landscape with a kind of awe, after having bicycled upwards of 1,500 miles in southwest desert country.
The landscape was not the only thing which caught our attention. Unfortunately, after a few miles, the road condition deteriorated to some of the bumpiest chip and seal surface we've had for years. As we jiggled along those bone-rattling miles, Lowell composed the following: “If Dante were alive today and bicycling with us, he would design a special torment for the road engineers who approved the chip and seal mixture put down on U.S. Highway 90 in Kinney County, Texas.” So there!
We began to experience rolling countryside. Not the long climbs up to mountain passes, but gentle terrain through farm and pasture country. Soon we got into the famous Texas Hill Country. Some of those hills were particularly “tandem-friendly.” Riding our machine is the most fun when we can gain enough speed on a short downhill to be able to crest the next uphill without gearing down, in thrilling 'roller-coaster' style! But some grades were too steep, forcing us to slow way down and work hard on the uphill climbs. When we got to the Guadalupe River we crossed back and forth about a dozen times. Fortunately the river was not too high, so all the crossings were dry.
In Kerrville we visited the delightful out-of-the-way Cowboy Artists of America Museum. They'd just had a big local artist exhibit and sale. I've never seen so many western scenes and bronze statues of horses in one place. The volunteers were so proud of their collection, but, as at the McDonald Observatory, several of them seemed to want to talk about our bicycle as much as about the museum.
Way back in New Mexico we learned that an Adventure Cycling tour group was behind us a few days, on the same route, of course. Well, after we took a while to see those cliff dwellings and took an extra day off in El Paso, they finally caught up to us. We had seen and talked to some of them on the day of the observatory visit, but we'd managed to stay one day ahead for about a week. It was much fun to camp for one night with the group of 18 in Comfort, Texas, where we exchanged stories and compared notes about wind and hills.
The next day, however, we went off the Adventure Cycling map route in order to visit friends in Seguin, near San Antonio. Though Seguin is home to “the world's largest pecan,” a huge wooden thing outside the country courthouse, no doubt much-photographed (except by us!), Mark and Pat took us into San Antonio for our tourist activities – the Alamo and the famed downtown Riverwalk. On the day we’d planned to bicycle to Austin, there was a threat of thunderstorms all morning and high winds out of the north all afternoon. Believe it or not, we accepted our hosts’ gracious invitation to stay an extra day, which we spent in the relaxing activites of reading, visiting, playing games, and eating well. Good decision, don't you think?
Our route to Austin was easy to follow, but a little longer than we'd planned. Bicycling in and around big cities is always slower than the same mileage across countryside. There are more stop signs, lights, and turns, and always more traffic. So we were happy to see at last the impressive capitol dome of the great state of Texas.
