Day 5; The Longest Day
We saved the longest day for the last day of riding. This time we would head west to places I have been before but others hadn't.
When we are camping in the desert, on the east side of BBNP, this ride plan has just a little to much pavement for some. It's well worth it to me. It's the best of both road and some REALLY good dirt, in my humble opinion.
Morning routine, load Perry in the Excursion and head to Kathy's for breakfast.
By now she knows all our names and some of us what we like to eat. It was good as always.
Back to the cabin and time for morning bike checks. Houston.....we have a problem. Phil has noticed that two of his spokes had come loose from the nipples. I take a closer look and point out the huge dent in the rim on the opposite side from the loose spokes. Chris says, "Oh yeah, I noticed your wheel wobbling yesterday when we were on the highway."
No worries, with Perry down for the duration we just happen to have a parts bike.
So, the mechanics get to work. The back wheel and almost new tire comes off Perry's and onto Phil's.
With the mechanical work done we were ready to ride. With the laid back schedule at Kathy's and the time to do the repairs it was almost 1100 by the time we got on 170 heading west.
You will see this view again. We rode through Lajitas, nothing has visibly changed there since last visit in October. Now the fun road ride starts. 170 is a great motorcycle road. There is an historic rest stop with steel and concrete tee pees, we didn't stop this time. One section has the steepest grade of any state highway. And curves and hills and scenic views. Choose your pace wisely. Either ride fast or look at the scenery, DO NOT TRY TO DO BOTH. That will get you into trouble. But don't worry, if you ride the speed limit and pay attention to the curve warnings you can have a fun ride and look enough to enjoy the vistas. This is what we did. Only on minor interruption to our ride. We were past the curviest and most hilly parts when we came up on this.
There in front of us were four riders on big cruisers, traveling 10 mph below the speed limit on a straight, although hilly, section of the road. Note the rider in the tail gunner position with the orange safety vest on. RANT ON: If you are going to ride slow, please don't impede traffic. We crept up on his right in line to pass. He would move over to block!
We would back off and he would take up position in the middle of the lane. This is not considerate behavior. If that was you, sorry we interrupted your slow ride. RANT OFF We waited until we could see far enough ahead to pass safely and made the move in the oncoming lane.
Seven miles east of Presidio, this was the first target. Casa Piedra Rd.
I was in the back of the pack at his point, I was also the only one who knew were the road was.
The leader had his GPS running but blew right past. I stopped and waited for their return. First David, then Phil who went back to where Chris and Dave had stopped to wait for us. Only took about 15 minutes.
Regrouped we head north on Casa Piedra toward Marfa. The road skirts the western edge of Big Bend Ranch State Park then continues on across ranch land. It's a county road that is well maintained, about 2 and a half lanes wide, smooth and fast. There is loose gravel and some sandy spots but you can usually see around corners enough to keep a pretty good pace which is exactly what we did. I took the opportunity to practice power sliding techniques I had been reading about in a thread on this forum. Lots of fun! Toward the end of the ride we came upon a railroad crossing with some deterrents to trespassers, and Dave doing a little melodrama.
After getting back on pavement it's about 25 miles of pavement on RR 169 and US 67 to Marfa were we arrived at about 1330. Lots of antelope grazing alongside the road as we came into town. We tried to get lunch at the Pizza Distribution Co., I have read good reviews and it smelled wonderful, however there was a 2 hour wait
so we opted for faster food at the local Dairy Queen. While there we had a nice conversation with a DPS trooper breaking for his lunch. He rode dirt bikes as a kid so was interested in our machines and our ride. Nice guy. After lunch a quick ride around the square and a wait on a freight train...
Then it was off to Pinto Canyon.
South on RR 2810 is a nice ride through open plains. Once again I took my highway position in the rear of the pack. I told you that you'd see this again...
I really like the DRZ for riding trails and she does pretty good on the highway at reasonable speeds. She cannot keep up with the KLRs on the highway. I can plod along at 70 without much trouble but they tend to run away after not very long. They didn't leave me behind. I'd just plod along and eventually they would slow down enough for me to catch up. We were back together when we hit the dirt again.
Pinto Canyon
Dave and David
Pinto Canyon runs through a private ranch but is a public county road. Many of these roads go private from time to time with change of ownership. Ask locals that you meet for updates. Exiting the ranch.
video
Since we were being tourists we decided on a trip to Chinati Hot Springs. A short 6 mile run from the exit of Pinto Canyon.
Management
Cabins
Elevated cool water pool
Large salt cedar tree
The shade was free and nice.
The managers let us fill our water bottles in the kitchen if we wanted. He said the water was laced with natural occurring lithium. Makes you feel good, he said. Since we were riding we declined.
Next stop Ruidosa. This is the topless bar.....no roof.
The old adobe church
And the store. A welcome stop for refreshments.
This is Rusty. He runs the store and take care of his 80 something year old Mom, the owner.
We met last October when Perry and I were riding this loop. He had just started the wall behind him in the photo. He uses empty aluminum soda/beer cans as the bricks. The white circles are taped over wine bottle embedded in the wall to allow light to show through. Once he has the stucco applied the taped will come off and the colored light will fill the room. Very creative. Several walls around the store are built using cans. This is the front porch, notice the low wall.
Chris bought a six pack of Dos Equis (sp?) and we invited Rusty to share a brew with us. He was thrilled. Said we were the first customers to stop by all day, it was about 4:30. One catch, TABC doesn't allow consumption at the store. He led us around to the back yard and the patio he had built.
The walls and seats to the right are constructed out of old tires filled with tamped earth and then stucco to cover. The planters and the arch on the entryway were the same can "technology" use out front. Very nice. Of course Rusty had done the tile work too. This is the tire wall going on around the property.
A couple of friendly questions got Rusty talking. He talked about life on the border, smugglers, government agents, and most interesting, his family history. Turns out Rusty's mom was the last living resident in the area that is now the Big Bend Ranch State Park. His grandfather owned 52 sections of land in what is now the park. He had struck it rich in cinnabar/mercury just before the breakout of WWII. Then as quick as it came it came to a screeching halt with the invention of non-corrosive primers in 1942 and the collapse of the cinnabar mining industry. He didn't say how much if any of it was left in their hands. He told us about the ghost town that was established as his grandfathers mining town north of Lajitas. He told us all bout the roads in the area. A couple that are on the map but he warned us not to even think about it. He doesn't use them unless invited and he's friends with the owner. We looked at he clock and we'd been chatting for over an hour and a half. We had a long way to ride with the sunset chasing us so we said "hasta la vista" and took off toward Presidio. We needed gas to make it back to Telingua so we stopped in Presidio. Now the question...What's wrong with this picture?
Chris had lost the front counter shaft sprocket bolt. We had been going 70+ most of the 37 miles to Presidio from Ruidosa. Lucky it all held together. Also lucky that there was an Auto Zone around the corner from the gas station.
It only took about 10 minutes of digging in the bolt bins to find the correct metric thread and length to put it all back together.
More time lost though. I knew we would not get back before dark. I don't like riding in areas that I know after dark. Less visibility equals less safety. But, what are you going to do? You keep riding and make adjustments to make it as safe as possible. We stopped at the rest stop with the tee-pees to regroup just before dark.
It was just getting dark as we started toward Lajitas. This section of the highway is low and follows the river. Then it got gross. The dusk caused all those little and big flying critters that live along the river to take flight looking for their evening meal.
Open face MX helmets and flying insects make for a wet sticky mess. It really felt like we were getting into a rain shower, we were getting pelted that much. One in particular hit just below my nose and the wings were fluttering up into my nose. It stopped as we climbed up the little hill into Lajitas. Riding in the dark, looking between the bug splats on the goggles, we made out way to the cabin.
The mileage count for the day was slightly over 300. Clean up was definitely called for before dinner.
Chris and Phil swapping tales.
We wanted something different so we opted for La Kiva. We loaded Perry into the Excursion and got there in no time.
Different is a good way to sum it up. The food was really good. Service? It was different. ALL drinks had to be personally ordered at the bar. Even iced tea or water. That was different for sure. I had a margarita. The bartender was pouring the tequila and stopped where he should have, looked at the bit left in the bottle and said, "oh well, this one is gonna hurt a little," and then he drained the bottle into my glass. He added a few drops of Cointreau and twisted a lime.
$3.50 I only needed one.
The clientel.... different. Our late arrival has us sitting down for dinner around 9:30. It was a younger more lively crowd than at any of the other places we ate. This is were the spiked hair and the skimpy clothing comes late at night. And we found they were going to have a live band.....from Austin. So, we had to stay for that. The Rockland Eagles who apparently are regulars in the live music scene around Austin. I really couldn't tell ya if that's true or not.
They played a type of hard rock/heavy metal music that sounded pretty good to me, regardless of how strong a drink I had. The show went on 'till around 1:45.
The show over we got "home" around 2:30. I had no trouble getting to sleep that night.