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Friday, November 16 - Back on Route, Almost
52 miles. Winnie, TX to Red Cloud RV Camp, Silsbee, TX
We were lucky today, the wind was only moderate, and
was mostly a cross wind, and it actually faded in mid-afternoon. We left our
motel/campground around 8:00 to head back up to the official Adventure Cycling
Route we have been following.
The route we took started out along farm road 1406,
with almost no traffic. The first 20 miles were past grazing cattle and
pastureland. This area must have at one time been a marshy tall grass prairie.
With all the moisture these grasses might reach a height of 10 feet and be
almost impenetrable. Man has dug drainage ditches to lower the water table and converted
it to his own needs. Where's the beef? Right here.
Then the road climbed imperceptibly but our legs could
feel it and we entered the "piney woods" of eastern Texas. We rode on
at a fast, for us, pace flanked by "beauty strips" of various widths,
but thru even the widest, open sky was clearly visible close by. This area has
been heavily logged but there is plenty of pine coming on and logging trucks
roared by all day with their spindly loads of second growth pine.
This must have been the basis of the economies of the
towns here and still is although the "heroic age" of logging is long
gone. We passed thru Nome (pop. 432), Sour Lake (pop. 1,690), Kountz (pop.
2,681) and Silsbee (pop. 6,446).
For the past several days we have been tiptoeing up the
eastern edge as a stalled upper atmospheric low from the Pacific has been
hammering central Texas including the Hill Country. We have remained high
[actually low, below 100 feet above sea level] and dry because a high pressure
ridge to the east will not let the low move east, but it is in fact helping pump
moisture from the Gulf into the maelstrom. This is fine by us. I don't think
this could happen like this in Michigan but the weather patterns are different
here. Vive la differance! As we camp and write this, the mosquitoes are descending.
This is the first really bad day we have had them, guess it will be an early
night to bed.
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