East Side, West Side

East Side, West Side

Finally, Texas. Starting in the morning rain on the Galveston shoreline, we managed to find a blue highway (State Rt. 6 via Alvin, home of Nolan Ryan to you beisbol fans) to Houston, where we visited with our dear North Carolina friend Erin and her family before continuing on to look for a place to pitch our small tent. If anything has made us feel like small-town rubes, it was driving on the network of highways leading out of the city. Five lanes of traffic at 80 mph was good to get behind us.

Just an hour out of Houston, though, we found Stephen F. Austin State Park and an almost empty, wooded campground on the Brazos River with white-tailed deer roaming everywhere. It felt like an oasis, and we slept soundly after dining on a can of Progresso clam chowder, cheese crackers and applesauce. In the morning, we took the bikes off the roof and followed a trail along the river until we bogged down in mud and had to turn back.

On the road again, we found ourselves through San Antonio and back on a blue highway west toward the Rio Grande sooner than we’d expected. Following a grocery-and-ice stop in Del Rio we continued a few miles on to Seminole Canyon, a small state park—eight tent sites—on the Mexican border. Dry and rocky but with fifty-mile views in every direction, it was a stark contrast to the previous night. Before leaving for Big Bend the following morning, we hiked to the canyon wall where we watched hawks and vultures (a lot more of the latter) circling in the updraft. Jackrabbits, but no roadrunners yet. -DJN