UNDER THE WEATHER

Cathy woke up with a sore throat on Tuesday and by Wednesday was in bad shape with a cold which I gave her, as I have been fighting one off for awhile. What can I say – I like to share! So yesterday was a lay around and get well day for us both. It would have been nice to get out in the fresh 17C temperature but we were not up to it.

The temperature last night dropped to -2C and it was 0 when I got up. I took in the water line to be sure it was safe from the cold. It was the coldest night yet for us.

Speaking of our health:

We received our report s from the Wellness Centre we attended in Mercedes. They indicated both Cathy and I are within the normal category. Cathy says I am as normal as can be expected from me! (What??)

This is great news meaning we will be able to continue travelling and these results when given to our Doctors can provide a benchmark.

When travelling around this area Cathy has been taking pictures of some of the entrances into the ranches. They can be pretty fancy and a lot of them seem to be electric. We have to imagine the type of Ranches they are entrances to, since they are not visible from the road. Here are a few.

 

 Til tomorrow...

BACK TO KERRVILLE

The cold front started coming in yesterday afternoon while we were coming home and we could feel the temperature dropping. The motorcycle thermometer started off at 26C and within 5 minutes the reading dropped to 20. The winds started about the same time but got really strong through the night.  We enjoyed more of the Hill Country with the high reaching 27C.

We wanted to go back to Kerrville to visit the Tourist Information Centre and get some gas and selected another route to come home. We checked out a store called Billy’s Western Ware. It was a large store containing all types of western wear, hats, boots and belts, buckles, boot straps with a lot of bling.   

Old section of Kerrville

Bill's Western Wear

The chicken car

 We stopped by Camp Verde, a U.S. Army Post Location that experimented with Camels for dessert warfare in 1857.  It didn’t work out for them.

Now a tourist trap complete with restaurant

We were driving through an area know for Dude Ranches and also noticed a lot of exotic animals in the fields.  Here are some pictures of some we saw.

Wildebeest and Mouflon Ram

Axis Deer

Wood Bison

We discovered in the 1930’s & 40’s when ranching was very difficult due to drought conditions that the farmers introduced different varieties of exotic animals to the region and opened up Safari/Hunting Ranches. People would come to the ranches that provide lodging and guides to go out to the open lands and track and shoot their trophy animal. In 1994 there were approximately 71 different species and 200,000 animals. Now, they estimate about 80,000 on the open range and are considered wild. The average cost to hunt a Wildebeest is $4200.00 for a trophy size, male deer $1500.00 and $2700.00 for the average Ram.

  

These grates are placed in front of the gates to prevent the animals from getting out if the gate is left open.

Most people in the hills have their homes on the top of a hill this guy was unusually high and the roadway is very steep.

 

 

 

 

The soil her is very gravelly and light in colour due to the contents of limestone and granite.

 All for now...

RIDE OVER TO BOERNE

The low Sunday night was 14, Monday had a high of 24c with a slight chance of drizzle.

We decided to take a run over to Ford in Borne which was about an hour’s drive to the east to see if they could look at the coach. As it turns out they are not really equipped to look at it as they only have one hoist and there is a wait list to use it.  They recommended a new facility North/East of San Antonio so we called them and they can accommodate us. We will probably take it in at the end of our stay in about 2 weeks. It will mean we will have to drive about 2 hours the wrong direction then come back to continue our journey west. This is becoming a real pain and time consuming. We would much rather be doing and thinking about other things.

The ride gave us a chance to explore other roads and areas. We did hit 2 little patches of drizzle which maybe only lasted about 1 minute each (no problem).

We stopped in a small town called Bandera known as the Cowboy Capitol and checked out the stores. They are getting ready for a Cowboy Mardi Gras. 

You could be the first in the neighbourhood to have a BBQ like this for $595.00

  T-shirt

  

 On the way home we saw out first Texas Long Horn. It was across the field and just received some hay from the owner, we stopped and watched it for awhile. It used one of its horns to toss the hay up like he was tossing a salad then carry on eating. He started off eating with his back to us but then started turning around and then noticed us and put his head up for his picture.

Once he noticed us he really was checking us out.

Further down the road there was a dead deer and it had a small flock of Black Vultures relaxing near it after having a meal.

Then, just down the road from that a Road Runner crossed in front of us. It was too fast for Cathy to get a picture. They are not really that big. The cartoon makes them bigger I suppose for a reason. Cathy googled them and copied this picture. Apparently they will eat small rattlesnakes.

All for now...

     

WOW – WHAT A GREAT MOTORCYCLING AREA

The weather started out really cloudy but by noon it was clearing and by late afternoon it was mainly sunny. Saturday’s low reached 14C and the high for Sunday reached 28.Great for riding!!

Here are some pics of the campground we took while checking it out.   

Pool with rental cabins

Looking over the pool - looks stormy but it was ok.

Medina River beside the campground

Nice view

We jumped on the bike right after lunch to check out the roads. We ended up going through Keerville  and stopped at Fredericksburg. This town is more of a tourist town. While walking the main street we noticed people were walking and drinking beer out of glasses and bottles. We dropped in a store that sold beer by the bottle refrigerated or warm off the shelves. They had all kinds of different ones, one was even pumpkin flavoured. We will be going back to check it out some more. Any way, it turns out the town has an ordinance which allows people to drink open beer on the main street back to the next parallel streets on both sides. This takes some time to get use to seeing. The one road we did take had lots of twists and even a couple of switch backs. (very cool! ). There were nice views of the hills and valleys along the way.  

Hope to check out all of these roads

They don't install bridges they just raise the road a little and put these measuring markers up to let you know how much water is over the it

Fredericksburg

 

 We arrived back at the campground and started checking out the map for future excursions. We were relaxing and having our own happy hour (force of habit now)

We noticed these 5 deer across from our campsite

They are smaller than the ones at home.

 All for now.....