Wednesday 4/1/2009; P'ville to Junction
For those who are still learning; TAR is the acronym for the Texas Adventure Ride. This annual dual sport event is held in Junction Texas. Richard has done a fantastic work in sharing his knowledge of the Texas Hill Country and in helping people get started in the adventure of riding dual sport motorcycles off the paved roads. My riding buddies and I were blessed being able to participate in the first Texas Adventure Ride back in 2007 (
http://www.twtex.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17432). My part of the report is
HERE. We had a great weekend. Thanks again Richard and all those who work on the TAR to make it the great event that it is. The TAR for this year is going on as I'm typing this report. Our work/vacation schedules have prevented us from making the TAR the last two years. Maybe next year.
Anyway, our trip started last Saturday as we were huddled around Perry's KLR replacing his
broken doohickey. Perry and I have been prepping our dirt machines for a LONG summer ride and have been talking about a shake down ride before the weather gets too hot. We needed to test our loads and gear for the trip. I mentioned that this weekend was the TAR and we talked about how great the weather was going to be this year. Then I had a brain storm. Why don't we take the days that we have and do an overnight trip to Junction as our shake down ride? Yeah, why not? Bikes are ready, we had most of the gear we'll be packing on the trip, I had some routes to get us there, grins all around. Four days later Perry and I were heading west for two days of dual sport riding.
Pflugerville to Junction is normally about a 3 hour road trip. Not the way we were heading.
I was figuring about five and a half, maybe six hours. Plenty of time for a one day ride. We would meet up at my house around 1000. Here's my DRZ 400 loaded and ready for a good ride.
Perry was right on time with his KLR ready to roll.
We would be heading toward Marble Falls on FM 1431. What a great road! even with all the "improvements" that DOT has made over the years it is still a fun scenic ride. Very little traffic this time of the morning. The section between Lago Vista and Smithwick just makes you grin.
After putting about 80 miles on the odometer we stopped at the last gas station on 281 south of Marble Falls before we would hit the dirt. Time to peel off a layer of clothing as the temperature was warming nicely.
Another 10 miles and we were on Llano County Road 310 and loving it. After a couple of creek crossings we stopped at this little cabin along the road for a photo. Nice place for a weekend get away spot.
I had the routes loaded into my Zumo 550 gps unit. The Zumo is one of the gadgets I was testing for the summer trip. I needed to make sure it was going to work well on the dirt and that the method that I was going to need to use for accessing the large maps needed was going to work well. No problems at all. I have really grown to appreciate this device. I've had it about 10 months now and love the ease of navigation it provides. I have the XM radio receiver also. It's really nice to listen to Willie's Place or whatever strikes the mood while buzzing down these back roads.
The other electronic gadget I need to test was the
SPOT tracker that I received in the mail a couple weeks ago. Thanks jbh for posting up the free SPOT offer.
I couldn't resist that one. The SPOT is going to come in handy this summer. We won't be in cell phone range for a lot of the trip so my wife will be able to see where we are and that we are OK using the message function. I started this trip with the SPOT attached to a strap on top of my Wolfman duffel bag. I was trying to ensure that it had a clear shot at the sky and the satellites that it communicates with. I was leading mostly because I had the routes and the gps unit. I saw Perry slow and stop in the mirror and turned around to find him standing in the road pointing at the small orange box on the ground.
Nice drop test.
The device took the fall in stride, still blinking like it's supposed to. The skid in the photo was Perry's evasive maneuver. I suppose running over it would have been a good test too. It was time to stop anyway as I had taken the wrong road at the last intersection. No problem as we ended up at very scenic pink granite outcropping. Dutch Mtn. I believe is the name of it. Now the SPOT will be riding in the map pocket on the Woldman Enduro tank bag.
We got back on the correct road and finished this leg of our journey. I had the route broken up into several separate routes and had them loaded onto the memory card to make sure I was doing that right. All worked like it was suppose to. Thanks Rusty, aka Woodbutcher, and Brutus for the tech tips on the
Zumo 550.
We rode until about 1330, that's 1:30 P.M. for all normal people, and stopped for lunch just past Loyal Valley. We ate what we carried. A shade tree beside the road makes a good resting stop.
Continuing on we enjoyed the scenery. I particularly like riding past the old ranch houses that line the route. We always slow to a crawl to reduce the dust and noise that our machines bring to the back road homes.
There are many water crossings along this route. Experience tells me to proceed with caution at every one of them. Most crossings are concrete to keep the roadbed from eroding. The concrete develops a nice coating of algae that we commonly refer to as slime. It is very slick, like riding on ice, and must be respected. Speed must be held constant with as little steering input as possible. Loose traction on the front and you are getting wet. Keep your thumb near the emergency kill switch just in case. If you go down you don't want the engine to inhale any water. Perry finally stopped so I could catch him on video. Notice the brown color of the bridge, that's the slime. He does fine. Also notice the grin behind his chin bar.
We carry on to the next crossing at the James River.
This one is the other type of crossing encountered. The roadbed is limestone bedrock.
This one isn't the worst since it isn't very wide. We ride on following directions given to me by Karen. She's the very nice lady with the Australian accent that lives in my Zumo. She's does the best she can to not get us lost. But since she doesn't live where we are riding she doesn't really know where she is sending us. She just relies on the latest version of the map to direct us along our route. There were two times this day she would lead us to a locked gate. Not her fault. The maps showed a road going through; numbered county roads. Kendall County 421 would end at the gate of the James River Ranch. No big deal as it was a lovely road up to the locked gate. A nice little creek to cross.
This type of crossing poses much less danger as the rocks and gravel in the bottom does not collect the slime and the "improved" low water crossings.
Nice thing about the Zumo is the detour button. When you do come upon a locked gate or closed road, at the touch of a button a detour is calculated and Karen tries to get you back on track by diverting around the obstacle. Works most of the time. We found our way through many gates. Or last stop was around 1630 as we got to the pavement leading into Junction.
It had been a great day of riding mostly on dirt roads. Not counting the 90 miles we had to ride before getting on the dirt, there had been less than 20 miles of pavement to this point and we were about 8 miles from Junction.
We made our way through town and checked into the S. Llano River State Park. Got a site close the showers and set up our basic camp.
We rode back into town for dinner at La Familia. Riding through town I waved at guy on a KLR coming out of a hotel parking lot. As we were taking off our riding gear, Mr. KLR pulled up in the lot and a new friend was met. Dave was in town for TAR, early. we chatted for a while and he decide to have dinner with us.
Fajitas and enchiladas were gulped in between stories of past rides. We wish Dave a good weekend and rode back to the park for the night. Riding in we spotted one site that had a R1200GS and a KLR parked next to the camper. A few minutes later the Beemer pulled into our site. He had heard the familar sound of the KLR and came to check us out. Turns out we had met and ridden together out in
Big Bend a in October of 2007. Small world. We reminisced and made plans for meeting up for breakfast. Other than a brief thunderstorm around 0300, we slept well.
I'll apologize now for all the links to past reports. This trip really brought back lots of memories from previous trips. All good.
Still to come; the trip back to Austin.
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 
can't remember her real name but she is known here as GTgirl. Sorry 'bout that. Nice meeting y'all. Breakfast was great and more stories were told. It was about 1030 when we finally got on the road. The wind was gusty and would slam the little DRZ and push it around. It kept me on my toes the whole day. The first leg would take us back the way we came into Junction the previous day. 
