Milkweed

It's been such a long time, I don't know where to start. When I last posted we were still in the Texas hill country. We got to camp in this beautiful canyon park called Lost Maples State Wilderness Area. I guess there used to be alot of maple trees throughout that part of Texas. Now there aren't many left at all. Although the hill country was pretty green, the only trees I saw were cedars and live oaks. But there are a bunch of maples trees down in this canyon. We trotted our bikes over a 0.7 mile trail to camp in a primitive site. The site was amazing. It was right beside this swimming hole. So pretty.

A couple days later we camped at Cooksey Park. It was interesting to me because it kinda felt like it came out of the fifties or sixties. Our campsite was sectioned off from the other sites by flowering bushes. There were tons of flowers everywhere that someone had planted and cute covered picnic tables.

Two days after that, we made it into Del Rio. Biking into Del Rio, the landscape looked like this:

Biking out of Del Rio it turned into this:

Suddenly, we were in the desert. In the hill country we had nice views, but we couldn't see very far. In the desert, the landscape is huge. We'll be biking along the road and we can see were it goes for miles ahead. It feels like forever to get anywhere because we can see so much. In the picture below you can see pretty much the whole train in the distance.

We went right along the Mexican border for a day or two. We saw the Rio Grande.

The views these past few days have been really amazing. At one point I came around a curve and the view made me feel like I was in a biking magazine. It's just incredible. I have to say, when we were planning the trip I wasn't at all excited about Texas. Every other state, I was excited about. But Texas seemed like it would be long and boring. However, Texas has been a blast. It's a gorgeous state. And it seems like every day the landscape changes a little. I love that. Louisiana was pretty boring for me because it was so flat and the view never changed much. But Texas ......

Anyway, yesterday we biked through the Davis Mountains. We made it over the highest point thus far. I think it might be the second highest point on the route. It was a little over 6000 ft. The climb was definitely difficult. It was pretty steep and just went on and on. But, we made it and we didn't have to walk our bikes, so I'm happy. Tonight we're recovering in a motel. It's pretty good.

Just a few more pictures:

This was before our big ascent. We got to try and guess which one of the mountains in the distance we'd be climbing.

In Kentucky the grass is blue and in Texas it's pink. Go figure.

This was coming out of the Davis Mountains. We went through a sort of canyon with hills like this on either side of us. It was so pretty and so different.

Well, I'm off. We should be in El Paso by Monday.