Rain? Well at midnight it started to rain and I had not put the rain fly on my tent. By the time I had got out of my tent and located the rain fly, the rain had stopped but I installed it anyway because there was heavy cloud cover. All this for nothing since it never rained a drop after that. I guess mother nature was just pulling a trick on me and a number of other team members.
We stopped at the Camp Wood convenience store for a few snacks to carry us over until we reached Leakey, a must advertised breakfast stop.
Just a few miles outside of Camp Wood, we saw a helicopter flying over a ranch. We expected he was doing a deer count to verify the deer population on the ranch to see if they could extend their hunting season. While the helicopter was hovering on various parts of the ranch we saw a couple of what looked like water buffalo. I am not any expert on exotic animals, so they could have been almost anything. But they came walking down a path toward us until they spotted us and went back into the trees.
The ride to Leakey had one major steep climb and a couple of smaller climbs just to get our attention and increase our appetites. Once in Leakey we took an off the route trip down highway 83 to the Mill Creek Café for a great breakfast. The food lived up to its hype and the server was very pleasant and interested in our journey. Little did we know how much we were going to need all the energy this meal would provide.
Right after leaving Leakey we began our first of 5 fairly long and steep climbs. It definitely got our attention. Along this stretch of road we passed one of the major milestones of the ride. 19 miles outside of Kerrville was past the HALF WAY MARK of the ride! Our lead group surprised us at this point with grilled cheese sandwiches and either a Coke or Root Beer Float. It was great.
I didn’t stay long at this rest stop because I was expecting my first visitors of the trip. My friend Irena Gadek-Linn and her husband Tom came over from Junction to have dinner with me. Irena and I had worked together on the Keystone Pipeline project before she and Tom retired to a place just outside of Junction. We had a pleasant dinner catching up with each other on the banks of the Guadalupe River.