Day 26 - Navasota - Batson
97 miles
Pretty solid day.
Got a breakfast taco this morning. It was delicious! Today I had to ride through several larger towns. The largest of which had about 90,000. So I guess the city.
I was on one road the whole day. Texas 105. That made things easy. Most places had a nice shoulder, very wide, very smooth. That made for easy riding.
One thing I've noticed here in Texas is there is a lot of counties. I can't tell you how many county lines I've passed the past couple of days. One thing I've also noticed, is the road surface generally changes at the county line. For better for worse. I think this is just a Texas thing. Each county has their pavement.
In that larger city, there was some construction going on. I lost the shoulder and had to ride in the road. Not terrible, but I had to go faster than I would have liked. The faster I go, generally speaking, the more recovery I will need.
They're a lot more trees and plants out here. Along with that comes bugs. The bugs are just bigger.
I went to 5 dollar stores today. 4 dollar generals, and 1 dollar king. I am aficionado of dollar stores. And I can officially say that the general has everyone beat. They just have everyone beat. Their selection is far superior, and the prices are reasonable. I went in one today, I've never seen this before, but they had produce! This is the first Dollar general I've seen ever have this! Good stuff
Wildlife:
I haven't experienced a ton. Couple rattlesnakes here and there, nothing dangerous. I saw a tarantula a while back. I was on the bike so it didn't bother me. I've seen more dead snakes than live ones. I haven't seen an armadillo, but I've seen many dead on the side of the road.
Texas has a lot of roadkill. I probably see 10 plus animals a day. At the bare minimum.
Dog wise, I haven't really had any close calls. Back in Arizona, I was on the interstate for the most part. So no dogs to chase me. Here in Texas, most people have fences to keep everyone out of their property... This inadvertently keeps the dogs inside their property.
Generally speaking, whenever I ride past a dog and it's within a fence I'm not scared. The dogs usually run as far as they can inside the fence and then they have to stop. Today, there was a gap in the fence. So I was going at a leisurely pace, and the dog jumped out of the gap, and I went extremely fast extremely quickly. I was not expecting that
The thing that has frightened me the most was dogs in a car. You don't expect it. But when A car drive slowly pass and a dog just starts screaming at you it catches you off guard. Not from a safety standpoint, it's just you're not expecting to hear a dog in it freaks you out for a second. That has happened twice so far
Those are just some general updates on the trip so far.
Tonight I'm staying at an RV park / the owner's yard. Tenting it. The owner is really nice. Texans have been pretty good to me. Little bit out of town. And by town I mean a town of a couple people or something!
Oh I had a cross / tailwind today! It wasn't a straight on tail end, but the wind was not blowing in my face today! The wind didn't have much help, cuz I don't think it got over four or five miles an hour. Still better than four or five miles an hour in my face!