I hope you enjoy the pics.
I picked up Alex at his house midmorning. We took off heading West and relucted to about 40 miles of interstate to make some distance. Luckily, the traffic was cooperative.
Once off the slab, I turned northwest into the piney woods. We got it all to ourselves.
I stopped in Merryville just before the LA/TX border and discovered something unusual.
The rubber on my footpeg apparently vibrated off. Alex indicated that he thought he saw something fitting the rubber’s description flopping behind my bike about 25 miles back, but didn’t think anything of stopping, figuring it was just some road debris.
In case you are not aware, the rear footpeg rubber is an exact match! No harm, no foul – moving on!
We cross into Texas and I pick a few roads I know in the Sabine National Forest before we stopped for lunch in Milam, TX.
I’ve eaten here many times before. The food is good and I like sitting on the patio.
This place is close to the world-famous Toledo Bend Reservoir.
One of Alex’s motorcycles is this 2017 RT – the white looks real sweet!
After lunch, I continued generally west northwest further into Texas. The riding here is very good. I’d call it “curvy”. Not overly twisty, but plenty of sweepers and even a few low hills to climb and fall on. The farm land here is pretty – mostly cattle and chickens. The roads are in great shape.
Mid-afternoon, well ….. you know.
And then I made a decent loop that ran along Sam Rayburn Reservoir (another HUGE trophy bass lake) and then turned north toward Nacagdoches, TX. Again, the roads are quite nice, and we enjoyed running in and out of the pine forest. I’m just doing what I do – glance at the GPS and if the road looks curvy, I take it.
At one point later in the afternoon, I saw a road that looked interesting, but to get to it, I chose to grab a county road that looked sketchy. My suspicion soon panned out as the pavement ended. I checked the GPS and it looked like only a couple miles of gravel. Alex was game, so off we went. About ½ a mile into that, it turned into packed sand. Now friends, let me tell ya – a big ole sport touring motorcycle with ¾ worn tires does NOT make for good dual sporting. We took it slow and I let the front tire do its thing. Thankfully, we made it without falling. We got lucky.
Now 5:00 pm or so, and we pull into the little town of Center, Tx. We stopped and got a $50.00 room right on the highway. No frills, mind you, but it was clean and quiet, and the restaurant and liquor store were literally at the end of the parking lot.
Nothing like a good beer at the end of the day.
I was kind of hoping for Tex Mex, but the restaurant was “home cooking”. The chicken and the pinto beans were decent, but the star of my meal was those homemade onion rings.
Our waitress was nice and she talked me into the cheesecake for dessert. It was pretty good, but Alex got the Peach Cobbler with ice cream, and I wished I would have picked that instead.
I slept pretty good on the hotel mattress. Still full from dinner and beer, we skipped the Continental breakfast and left town under beautiful sunshine and about 50 degrees.
.
Again, I’m just winging it in and out of the forest, taking any road I see that looks decent. It was really nice. A Wednesday, there was NO traffic to be found on the roads. We had the whole place to ourself.
Now mid-morning, I crossed Toledo Bend back into Louisiana. Not much wind on the lake today.
Looking quite nice, Alex!
Ya know – it can’t all be The Dragon or Yosemite or the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is just fine with me today.
We stop for gas just inside Louisiana, and I asked a local for a food suggestion. He said this place is good, so we made an early lunch of it.
No food porn, but I chose a chicked salad sandwich on a croissant and it was just fine.
The horses seem content to wait while we eat.
After lunch, I grabbed some familiar curvy roads I know heading generally east through the Kistachie National Forest.
I stopped at the “overlook” on the Longleaf Vista Scenic Byway. In Louisiana, this is about as high as it gets – a whopping 350 feet!
We zigged and zagged a bit more and then, well… you know….
After ice cream, I started moving more south heading in the direction of home. Again, the roads were familiar, but we had a nice time and really enjoyed the solitude in it.
I get back to Lafayette about 4 pm, but was unable to avoid the rush home traffic. So we slogged slowly across town and I made it to my house about 4:45 pm, long before dark.
Well – that about does it. There were no life changing revelations. No wonderous, mind-boggling roads. No culinary discoveries. No history lessons.
Just a couple of good days riding my motorcycle.
Stay thirsty, my friends….
