Welcome to the Two Wheeled Texans community! 
Feel free to hang out and lurk as long as you like. However, we would like to encourage you to 
I left for Salado on saturday morning. The plan was to have lunch at Salado with some friends from the Women Who Ride forum in Delphi, including a couple of lady TWTers (BMWBabe and Nightwing) and spend the night in Round Rock with other friends.
I also wanted to catch up collecting letters for the SCRC A-Z ride, it's been a while since I started that little project so this was a nice little trip to get some. With Salado being a mere 177 miles from the house, and the lunch scheduled at 1:00pm, I had plenty of time to get there and stop along the way.
My route had me going through Bellville, so I made the mandatory stop at Newman's bakery to have breakfast, where I had the usual hotcakes and ham. I took my sweet time and enjoyed the meal, the hit the road.
The first stop was at Bleiblerville, to get my "B," where I stopped at the Post Office to get the picture. I picked it because of the unusual name for a town.
From there I headed to Dime Box. There are no towns in Texas that start with the letter "x", so the rules let you pick a town with "x" in it. Everyone else is using Dime Box, and although I wanted to pick a different town to get this letter, I decided to do Dime Box since it was on the way.
Somehwere on 112 I saw a water tank with a smiley painted on it. On my last trip to Austin I found another one, which I took a picture of and sent to "Roadside America", where they have a section dedicated to smiley water tanks in the US. They had none in Texas, so mine was the first entry. When I saw this second tower, I pulled over for the photo op:
A zoomed photo shows the smiley in better detail:
A lady from WWR has a website for "big stuff", so I stopped to get a photo of this bull:
Another angle gives a better idea of its size:
One more letter: "t"
The route I mapped out took me through some country routes, or the dreaded "CR"s...Most of the time CR roads are not paved, but some of these showed promise. After pulling out of the main road and following my GPS instructions, I turned into the first "CR" road of the morning. This was a nice paved road, lots of crops and cultivated land all around
After turning into different roads, as per the mapped route, the roads started getting narrower and narrower....and more bumpy...until I had to turn into a gravel road. I saw on the GPS where it said that next turn was a half a mile away, so I kept going. But that only took me to another unpaved road...and another...and another...
FInally I got back to a major road. But couldn't say much about the town....
...But at least I could land another letter...sorta...
From there, more dirt....
Three miles later I made it out of the last of the unpaved roads. Thirty minutes later I finally arrived in Salado, still with plenty of minutes to spare. While I put my gear away Brenda (Nightwing) pulled in with the beautiful BMW R1200RT:
We had a couple of tables reserved for us at the Stagecoach Inn. Nice little diner with no printed menus. Once we all got seated we started catching up with each other lives. It was nice seeing all friends and meeting a couple new faces.
Salado is a cute little artsy town
Janelle getting a feel for Pat's new bike:
I sat on Brenda's bike. Amazingly I can flat foot it!
ROb's chance to sit on the RT:
I took advantage of a historical marker in town to get my "S":
I rode behind Lynda and her husband back to the Austin area. They already had a backroad route mapped out that would take me pretty much all the way to my friends' house avoiding I-35 altogether.
I left sunday morning, after a nice breakfast. These are my friends: Adri, Luis, and their baby, Luis Daniel. Their furry baby is on the right corner, but can't barely see it.
On my way back to Katy I stopped at La Grange
...where I got another letter...
...and stopped for lunch. From La Grange I took a few backroads, but eventually made it back to I-10 and hightailed it to home.
I also wanted to catch up collecting letters for the SCRC A-Z ride, it's been a while since I started that little project so this was a nice little trip to get some. With Salado being a mere 177 miles from the house, and the lunch scheduled at 1:00pm, I had plenty of time to get there and stop along the way.
My route had me going through Bellville, so I made the mandatory stop at Newman's bakery to have breakfast, where I had the usual hotcakes and ham. I took my sweet time and enjoyed the meal, the hit the road.
The first stop was at Bleiblerville, to get my "B," where I stopped at the Post Office to get the picture. I picked it because of the unusual name for a town.
From there I headed to Dime Box. There are no towns in Texas that start with the letter "x", so the rules let you pick a town with "x" in it. Everyone else is using Dime Box, and although I wanted to pick a different town to get this letter, I decided to do Dime Box since it was on the way.
Somehwere on 112 I saw a water tank with a smiley painted on it. On my last trip to Austin I found another one, which I took a picture of and sent to "Roadside America", where they have a section dedicated to smiley water tanks in the US. They had none in Texas, so mine was the first entry. When I saw this second tower, I pulled over for the photo op:
A zoomed photo shows the smiley in better detail:
A lady from WWR has a website for "big stuff", so I stopped to get a photo of this bull:
Another angle gives a better idea of its size:
One more letter: "t"
The route I mapped out took me through some country routes, or the dreaded "CR"s...Most of the time CR roads are not paved, but some of these showed promise. After pulling out of the main road and following my GPS instructions, I turned into the first "CR" road of the morning. This was a nice paved road, lots of crops and cultivated land all around
After turning into different roads, as per the mapped route, the roads started getting narrower and narrower....and more bumpy...until I had to turn into a gravel road. I saw on the GPS where it said that next turn was a half a mile away, so I kept going. But that only took me to another unpaved road...and another...and another...
FInally I got back to a major road. But couldn't say much about the town....
...But at least I could land another letter...sorta...
From there, more dirt....
Three miles later I made it out of the last of the unpaved roads. Thirty minutes later I finally arrived in Salado, still with plenty of minutes to spare. While I put my gear away Brenda (Nightwing) pulled in with the beautiful BMW R1200RT:
We had a couple of tables reserved for us at the Stagecoach Inn. Nice little diner with no printed menus. Once we all got seated we started catching up with each other lives. It was nice seeing all friends and meeting a couple new faces.
Salado is a cute little artsy town
Janelle getting a feel for Pat's new bike:
I sat on Brenda's bike. Amazingly I can flat foot it!
ROb's chance to sit on the RT:
I took advantage of a historical marker in town to get my "S":
I rode behind Lynda and her husband back to the Austin area. They already had a backroad route mapped out that would take me pretty much all the way to my friends' house avoiding I-35 altogether.
I left sunday morning, after a nice breakfast. These are my friends: Adri, Luis, and their baby, Luis Daniel. Their furry baby is on the right corner, but can't barely see it.
On my way back to Katy I stopped at La Grange
...where I got another letter...
...and stopped for lunch. From La Grange I took a few backroads, but eventually made it back to I-10 and hightailed it to home.
