Day 5 – Happy 100th

Its amazing to see pine trees everywhere in east Texas with myrtles in bloom interspersed among them. It seems unnatural. For me, I’m used to pines being a high altitude cold climate tree and myrtles only growing in the low lying flats with scorching heat. Complete polar opposites, but here everywhere along the road you see splashes of color reds and pinks of wild myrtles amongst the pines.

We were told to look out for a mountain watch tower where there was a nice scenic rest area where you could see all across east Texas for miles and get a better feel for the area. We kept an eye out for it and eventually came to a Mt. Selman Texas without seeing any sign of a mountain at all. Looking on the Google topographical map view of the area later its just a ridge thats a whopping 400 ft higher than the valleys to the east. I guess if 400 ft classifies a genuine mountain we have a lot of names to change back home.

A little ways past Mt Selman we found Loves Lookout. This place was amazing! By far the nicest rest stop I’d ever seen, thanks for the tip Terry. The landscaping was pretty spectacular, it looked more like a garden park instead of a roadside restroom. They had very nice bathrooms, free cold bottled water, pamphlets and info on touristy things to do and even had wifi. Quite a change from NM rest stops where you are lucky to even have running water or a bathroom at all.

A guy on a VTX pulled up and talked to us. “I sawr your guys was loaded down, then I sawr that thar yeller plate and thems mus be really travl’n. Whar y’all from?” He was a pretty cool guy and had ridden through Santa Fe several times. Wouldn’t be the last time someone asked about our mysterious foreign “yeller plate.”

Thats the thing. You meet all these friendly locals everywhere that come up to chat with you. First they just want to know where you’re from and where you are headed. Then they’ll give you some helpful pointers on what to check out and good riding roads and before you know it they are talking your ear off and you have to find a polite way of saying “Thanks but I gotta get on down the road!”

We had to keep going to find some breakfast. Trying to stick to my no chain restaurants rule this time we cruised through some small towns and found absolutely nothing. Continuing on to Rusk again nothing. We backtracked and went through the center of town keeping an eye out for any groupings of cars that might be a clue of some good eating inside, again nothing. Don’t people eat breakfast around here? Nothing open at all except a lumber yard. Making another circle we finally stopped at a gas station/Whataburger. I got a honey butter chicken biscuit thing with hash browns that was out of this world. I may have to eat at Whataburger for breakfast more often.

While waiting for our foot I noticed Cece was still scratching a bite on her elbow from yesterday. Out of her gear that thing was HUGE! It looked like half a golf ball under the skin, and very hot to the touch too. Oh crap, this doesn’t look good. I looked closely and noticed two visible puncture marks a few mm apart from what we assume had to be a spider bite. Having seen some bad brown recluse and black widow bites before, visions of hospital visits and a end to the trip were going through my head. The night before it looked like a medium sized mosquito bite only, she had to have gotten it at the Arboretum.

We called her boss Bob Myers from the Rattlesnake Museum to try and find out what to do. He recommended a hot towel compress and looked online to research what kinds of spiders were in this area that could have done this. I came back from a mini adventure trying to hunt down some hot water and paper towels to find all the cashiers and cooks gathered around while Cece told of our trip so far, LOL. “You came all the way from New Mesico? Good Lawd! You aint gett’n me on no motorsicle.” They were all friendly and concerned that she was going to be ok.

We were finally able to get ahold of Cece’s mom who’d apparently forgotten her phone charger and had been keeping it off to conserve power. It had been a blackout of information for the past two days, nobody answered their phones and we weren’t really sure where we were supposed to go. They were already there and were waiting for us. Now that we had directions, we said goodbye to our new friends and hauled ass down the main highway instead of a relaxing pace down some farm roads we had planned.

We got to “Nac” quickly but doe to some bad directions we went back and forth through town 3 or 4 times looking for everyone. I learned the rest of Nacadoches well enough that I was giving directions to Rusty when he got lost getting the birthday watermelon. They all joked that I knew the area better in a few hours than they did after coming here their whole lives.

The 100th birthday party for Nanny was nice. It had been a tradition her whole life she said to have watermelon for birthdays instead of cake. Interesting, and I guess that would make it easier not having to bake a cake while its 100 degrees outside. There was a lot of people I didn’t know that were all keen on meeting me, making me wonder whats all been said over the phone. All good I hope.

Nacadoches was a cool little town. They have brick streets like Santa Fe. Unlike Santa Fe, however, they actually drive over those streets at normal speeds making those bricks like the roughest cobble stones you can imagine. Its enough to shake your teeth out. Wish we’d had more time to take some more pictures and explore it a little more but we had to keep going if we were going to make check-in at our camp by 5.

Rayburn Park was great! The RV pads with electricity were all taken but we had the tent section on the other side of the peninsula all to ourselves. Apparently camping on a lake in the middle of summer when its 100+ degrees and super humid outside is not all that popular, I wonder why? Even though we’d reserved a full shade spot online the park guys let us pick any spot we wanted. We got a perfect level spot with lots of trees for shade and just off the water. With the tent turned into the wind it wasn’t that bad at all. $11 a night, cant beat that.

I tried my hand at some camp pasta fettuccine with canned chicken. Lets just say that after a week of banging around in the bottom of a saddle bag all the way across Texas and New Mexico in 100 degree heat that chicken was nasty.

The bathrooms on the tent side were kinda gross, nothing more than outhouses that dripped water and were filled with swarms of bugs. Over on the side of the park with electricity there was nice bathrooms and showers, but nothing like that on our end and in all likelihood nobody had been in a tent for some time so they probably hadn’t been cleaned in a while. There was a lot of these geckos stuck to the walls and upside down on the roof when we went there at night that were pretty cool. They’d hang out by the lights and snack on all the bugs that were attracted to them.