Friday, April 18, 2008
Langtry, TX to Sanderson, TX
62 miles (2498 total miles)
We woke up exhausted this morning (see late breaking news on yesterday's page), slept another hour and got up at 7. We had breakfast - the muffins and cream cheese we bought yesterday - and went over to the visitor's center to wash up. We managed to stall long enough for the dairy bar to open so I could get a cup of coffee before starting. Our only stop-over town today was Dryden, 41 miles from Langtry. The going was rough, there were a lot of hills, and a lot of climb. The scenery was still beautiful and interesting. We saw a lot of different terrain features. We also saw two other touring couples. One couple we did not stop to talk with, unfortunately. We were hitting 35 miles an hour on our first decent downhill when we spotted them and we just could not bring ourselves to stop. We found out later that they were Rick and Jane from Wisconsin. The second couple was Ellen and Lowell from Youngstown, Ohio. And they were on a tandem! We had a long chat with them - they're apparently veterans at bike touring.
We ended the day at Sanderson after 62.5 miles in almost 7 hours of bike time, a miserable average. We had left at 9:40 and arrived at our motel at about 6:20, hot and sweaty. Sanderson was a lovely town, nestled inside Sanderson Canyon and surrounded by awesome hills. More about Sanderson tomorrow, when we should have more time and energy to post.
One of the neighbor's chickens - his rooster woke us up early after a hard night
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A large Saguaro Cactus near the dairy bar - we also saw a Road Runner here but didn't get a picture
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The front of the Visitors Center, the Judge Bean courthouse is behind the center
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An interesting pile of junk vehicles on the way out of town
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Today's landscape, similar to yesterday's
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The road ahead, rough surface, frontage roads on either side
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The road winds and dips
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Cactus by the road
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A marker for the town of Pumpville, with not much to see
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The terrain was mostly flat and shrubby
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More cliff strata
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Some small hills
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These little mounds looked like giant ant hills
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Rare boulder-like hills appeared
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Lowell and Ellen from Youngstown, Ohio...
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on their tandem bike
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A typical Border Patrol vehicle on a frontage road, towing an ATV
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Flowering ocotillo and yucca plants at a roadside picnic area
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Cactus lining a railroad track
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We saw many of these flowers along the road
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Another interesting rock face
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We knew this wasn't the Marlboro Man - his hat wasn't big enough
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Interesting hill shapes with cliff ridges, and a train going by, as we come into Sanderson
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Another view of the train, so far off it looked a toy train set
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Hills in Sanderson Canyon
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Rock cliffs line the edges of the hills over Sanderson
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The road into Sanderson
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More interesting hills around the town
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Our motel room, snuggled up under the mountain
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