Mileage - 40.9; Total Mileage - 163.0 miles
Margarita Count - 4 (Still!)
Today the adventure officially began. Last night got down to 48 degrees and it was very humid making it feel colder than that. My sleeping bag did good and I slept good - just had to keep my head buried in the bag to keep my nose from getting cold. The dew was so heavy that when I went to bed about 9pm the tent fly was already totally wet.
This morning was still damp and cold, with a wet tent fly. We hung the fly up to dry some and wait for the sun to come up to warm us up before leaving. We didn't get out of camp until 10am.
The original plan was a 37-mile day. You can see that's not exactly what happened. We crossed back into Texas a mile into today's ride. There was a nice stone sign right after we crossed the Sabine River, along with the more traditional Texas highway welcome sign.
We had a beautiful rolling country road when we left Longasport for the first 6 miles. We were chatting and enjoying the sunny and almost watm morning. It was picture perfect!
Until we saw the sign that said State Road Maintenance Ends. Yep - the road turned to dirt/gravel. We had a series of county roads that would keep us off the main road and those were the only two options. We wound up riding 11 miles of dirt/gravel. They were so narrow that when a semi-tractor came down the road we all had to move into the ditch to let him by. The county roads were quiet and beautiful, but so much slower especially when full loaded.
Reba was riding out and back with us again today and had her fill of the gravel at 4 miles. She turned around and had a shorter riding day back to the van. She has skinny 23mm tires on her road bike so she did good to ride those 8 miles without a problem. Reba definitely mad the right decision!
The weather warmed up pretty quickly this morning when the wind changed directions and started blowing out of the south-southwest. Of course that is the general direction we are taking for the rest of the tour. Each day will be a little warmer so I expect a headwind the rest of the tour.
When I got on the bike and started pedaling this morning, my body said, "What the hell are you doing?!?!" Everything was a little sore and tired. Day 3 of a tour I am tired by the end of the day. Day 4 is always the hardest day for me. And that was no different this tour than any other.
We made it all the way to Day 4 before changing our route from the original plan. Usually that happens on Day 1! I'd like to think it was because I did such a great job with routing, but the reality is there weren't a lot of other good options this time.
We saw a lot of chicken barns today but none of them seemd to ne operational. Not sure why that was but maybe there was some type of disease that went through here and they all had to be culled.
The miles passed slowly today because I was tired. The scenery was still beautiful pine trees and the roads were mostly quiet. Our last 10 miles to camp were on US96. While it is a major highway, it had a great shoulder. The good thing as a US highway is that the grades are usually smoothed out some.
We were slow today and already looking at a later arrival to camp until I managed to drop my chain down between my cassette and spokes. It took Dave about 30 minutes to get it worked out of there and then I had to reload my bags. We didn't roll into camp until about 6pm.
I sure was happy to see this sign! I knew it meant we were finally coming in to San Augustine and calp wasn't far.
By the time we got to camp, Reba lnew all the neighbors and we settled in. I was more tired than hungry tonight so I decided I didn't want any dinner. Reba took Dave into town for a burger while I went to bed early at 8pm. I was gone by the time they got back!
I'm looking forward to a shorter day tomorrow.
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