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Published: February 4th 2007
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Stealth camping
We were hidden from the road very well. Jo and Shawne say...
Day: 43
Mileage Today: 42.0
Total Mileage: 1754.55
Flats Today: 0
Total Flats: 44
The dew was terrible this morning, and we had to pack our gear wet. We ate some Mexican food at a little cafe, and Jo asked the waitress if the town was called Center Point because it was the middle of Texas.
"Nah," she replied, "it's just the middle point between Kerrville and Comfort, ma'am."
We passed an old school that had been very well kept, and middle school kids were playfully chasing one another throughout the grounds. They yelled at us as we went by...
"Nice bikes!", one called.
"I love America!", shreiked another.
Our favorite, however, was a small boy who waved at us in passing, and when we waved back, he yelled, "Piss Off!"
It was a nice ride into Comfort...wide shoulders and smooth pavement, with only an occasional car driving on the shoulder of the road. We stopped at a gas station to use the restroom, and as we were leaving, Shawne saw an upholstery shop across the street. A big sign out front stated, "Parking For Mexicans Only!".
We crossed I-10 and took a left to head
You can't see us
especially if you drive a Range Rover. toward Waring. The road started getting pretty hilly. We noticed blue signs in front of houses, and printed on them, was the name of a high school student and graphics of the sports the kid played. It also stated whether they were a "Bobcat" or a "Deer", which apparently are the rivaling teams. Shawne said it was really so the high school boys could find the girl's houses easier.
Waring basically didn't exist, so we travelled on to Sisterdale. The hills were getting steeper and steeper, and we hoped they'd level out soon. We stopped at the store in Sisterdale, but all they served was beer. We asked if there was another store in town.
"Nah, it's just us and the winery," was the response.
We turned onto route 473, and the hills were even worse than before. We were definately in Texas Hill Country. We'd race down one side of the hill at thirty miles an hour, our B.O.B. trailers pushing us faster and faster. However, we'd almost stop completely as soon as the next hill started. We began calling them walls instead of hills, and the name fit. We struggled and strained up each grade at about three miles per hour, and had to stop at the top of nearly each one to catch our breath. The uphills became taller and almost unbearable as the day wore on. The routine on this route was getting really old, and we were running out of water. It was about eighty-five degrees, and we were sweating profusely. Our bodies, being efficient machines, were using every ounce of fluid, and we noticed we hadn't been urinating as often as we should.
We filled up our watterbottles with the last of our precious liquid, and decided we'd go off route a few miles into the town of Kendalia. Our maps showed a post office, a gas station, and a grocery store. We drank the last of our water and pulled the last hill into town. We were delighted to find that they served hamburgers...real hamburgers...at the store. We ate, and drank, and drank some more.
Rehydrated and back outside, we detached a garden hose to fill up our bottles from a spigot. Once the hose was off, we noticed throngs of ants covering the spigot. We managed to fill up without any ants in our water, but at that point we had more weight than we'd had all day. When Jo saw a sign for a church, she asked Shawne to stop for the night. He wanted to push on, though, so we rode back on route and up a few more hills before Shawne, too, had enough. He'd found an open gate at the entrance to a huge expanse of property. When Jo caught up to him, she quickly noted that the fence wasn't a game fence, though the one next door was. This was a good sign. Here we wouldn't have to worry as much about wild hogs since they weren't being walled in the property.
No one was watching, and there was no sign stating, "No Trespassing" or "Private Property", so we decided it was an invitation. We rode downhill about a quarter of a mile and then walked our bikes behind a stand of trees. We set all our gear out to dry and laid on the ground on a sleeping bag, visiting. By the time the sun was setting, our gear was pretty dry, so we set up camp and hid the bicycles in the bushes.
"Look up! Look up!" Shawne said excitedly. Jo looked up to find hundreds of thousands of butterflies in a cloud headed toward the hills, their silhouettes echoing against the pink sky. We watched in amazement as they swarmed overhead. The migration probably lasted five full minutes, and we felt so fortunate to have seen that magical moment.
A car slowed on the road and turned onto our dirt road. We assume it was the owner of the property, and we watched as he got out of his car and retrieved his mail. We kept an eye on him while he got back into his car and drove slowly down the dirt road toward the valley below. He never even looked in our direction, but if he had, we were hidden so well we doubt the gentleman would've seen us.
We brought out the flashlights and did "eyeball scans", looking for the reflection of animal eyes in the dark. We never found any, but we did hear rutting deer in the woods, and some shots from the neighboring game farm. A band starting playing loud Mexican music from the ranch next door...a real party!
We laughed and laughed that here, in the middle of nowhere, TX, on a huge expanse of empty land, there was a band playing! Shawne read a National Geographic map out loud to Jo while she kept an eye out for passing cars.
"Light!", Jo would say, and Shawne would quickly turn off his headlamp.
"Okay", Jo would say when the car had safely passing without detecting us, and Shawne would turn his light back on and keep reading as though he'd never been interrupted.
We talked about how much fun it would be to start a radio station in Alpine, TX, as we drifted off to sleep.
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