Texas

In late May, I went to visit my folks in Texas. My Dad was strong and fit and ready to go ride every day, so Sunday morning we headed over to Tyler to check out some stuff that we'd never ridden before.

First up was Faulkner Park.

On the way over, we had all kinds of fun with technology. I used my phone to navigate, but it wanted to send us down a toll road. I tried asking Siri to navigate us to Faulkner Park with no tolls, several different ways, as well as manually typing in various permutations of the same, only to get the same route, with tolls, every time. My Dad's phone is newer (not that that should matter, we have the same OS and Maps versions, I checked) so I tried talking to Siri on his phone, and it couldn't even understand my voice. I was finally able to get a route, with no tolls, by holding the phone close to my Dad's face so he could talk to it.

Tekmology!

When we did get there, it was great.

You park next to this lake...

And the trail is fast and fun.

You can really keep speed, and there's like 7 miles of trail, so you're just cruising for a long time.

It's also pretty scenic here and there.

The soil is a little sandy, but not sandy enough to erode badly, just sandy enough that it's fine to ride if it rained yesterday, unlike just about everything in the Dallas area.

On our first lap, we somehow missed a huge chunk of trail, but managed to pick it up on the second lap. There were lots of switchbacks and jumps, some of which were pretty big, but fortunately most of the jumps had ride-arounds.

There were 2 actual jump-lines out there too.

We kind-of screwed around on them, but honestly, I've kind-of lost my jumping legs. For a while there, I could confidently jump a lot of stuff, but after breaking my ribs, I never really got back into it and a lot of jumps seem unexpectedly abrupt to me now. It was like that with all of the jumps on that first line. They felt abrupt. The second line had smaller jumps and they all felt like expected, so I don't know. It's going to take time, I guess, and it's hardly a priority.

We had a really great time. It always great to ride with my Dad when he's feeling strong.

We rode just about everything there, but did skip Voodoo Child...

...as it started with a drop and the Most Difficult sign made us a little apprehensive.

Since we were in the area, we hit the UT Tyler trails next.

It was a little difficult to figure out where to start though. There was no obvious trailhead and we ended up driving around for a while looking for a place that was even legal to park. We eventually parked in a lot outside of a newly constructed parking garage and divined our way to the actual trailhead from there.

Being spring still, there were a million wildflowers.

That's one thing I love about Texas in the springtime. Flowers everywhere!

It turned out the start/end of the trail was along the highway. I guess that's good access if you live nearby, but from the campus, it was difficult to get to.

The trail itself was kind-of difficult in every way - hard to find, really steep, super twisty, a little overgrown, sandy, eroded, thick with pine needles, difficult to navigate, and it was conincident with a disc golf course.

Toward the end of the trail, it kept winding back on itself, over and over. Also, my Dad was feeling a lot better than I was, apparently. My head was splitting by the time we were done and I was having to just sit back and grind out every little climb. In retrospect, the trail may have been better than I remember. I may just not have been feeling all that good.

When we were done with that, we jumped out on the road for a block or two and tried to find another section of trail, a bit to the east. We managed to find some of it, but it looked like it might have long been abandoned. A section of it was rideable, but definitely hadn't been ridden in a long time. Another section of it appeared to have been obliterated by recent thinning and the construction of a paved trail.

Rather than ride back down the highway, we tried to feel our way back through campus.

We saw lots of bikes parked everywhere, so apparently, if you know your way around, it's quite bike-accessible. We didn't know our way around though, and ended having to walk down a pretty long flight of stairs to get over to where we needed to be.

On the upside, there was this really cool turtle sculpture.

We grabbed some dinner at Whataburger and headed back to Forney. It had felt like a long day.

The next day we rode at Goat Island, which is pretty much obligatory, I mean, come on.

My Dad was super strong. He looks very pleased with himself in this photo, as well he should, he honestly kind-of drug me around the place all day.

The river had been up and down a lot the past few times I'd ridden there, but this time it was kind-of how I generally think of it being.

There's one bit of trail though, that leads out near the edge of a bend, and they've had to move it inland twice because of the bend getting eaten out by the river, and now the edge is now pretty close to the trail again. The power of water always amazes me!

Out near the beltline, they're doing some kind of construction or something, and the right of way has all of these mats laid down for the equipment to drive on. We had to cross them once, then later just ride right down them, as the trail follows the right-of-way for a while.

That's something you don't do every day!

On the way out, the trail was pretty overgrown with grass, as happens out there in the late spring. A few times we struggled to figure out where to go. On the way back, there were several tangles of deadfall, and we cleared a few of them.

My Dad usually cranks out two laps for about 30 miles, but when we got back to the lot, I wasn't feeling well enough to do another 15, so instead, we took the gravel road out and trails back. Somewhere in there a spider got in my Dad's helmet and it took a while to find.

I felt like falling asleep in the car on the way home, and by that evening I was sick as a dog. The next morning I went to a local clinic and got tested for the flu, covid, and strep throat. Negative on all counts. My parents never got sick, so it must have just been some Texas crud that they're already immune to, but man was it awful. I was laid up on the couch for the next two days, before finally feeling okay-ish on the third.

There's a new trail system in Kaufman County at Wildcat Ranch. I'd stumbled upon the Wildcat Ranch neighborhood a while back, when I discovered a new little side road leading off of FM260. I only later discovered that they were building a trail near that same neighborhood. It was an exciting development though, because it would be the closest singletrack to my folks' house, and also easy to add in to another route that I liked to ride out that way. We hadn't ridden it yet though, so when I was finally feeling well enough to ride, we went and checked it out.

It turned out to be a pretty good trail. Not super long, only about 5.5 miles of trail, but still, pretty good.

There were south and north loops, and the trail itself wasn't too homogenous. I mean, it was fairly recognizable as Dallas-area trail, but there were grassy sections, sections out in the open, sections in the woods... that kind of thing.

Of course, it was punctuated by a few technical creek crossings, but nothing we couldn't ride pretty easily.

One bit popped out along the back of some houses for a while, and there were beautiful flowers all along the edge of the woods there.

There was also this weird collection of poles that you ride right through.

No idea. I'm sure somebody knows. I want to know too.

The only sketchy thing is that way out on the north loop, the trail winds around a bunch of little ponds, and I'm sure when it's wet, the trail is unrideable out there. We even had a little trouble with some mud. Not enough to cake up really badly that day, but I could imagine on other days.

We rode two laps of the trail..

...then tried to ride through the neighborhood and pick up FM260 for some gravel, only to find that new construction had made its way all the way up to the FM road, and the road itself was currently being worked on. There was no way to ride it. We'll just have to see what happens to it in the future. I hope it at least remains a road, and doesn't get split into two distinct parts. I always liked riding it, and if it's split, then it'll ruin the gravel loop that I used to do out that way.

It turned out that there was a gravel trail running around the outside edge of the neighborhood, so we rode that, just to do it, before finally heading back home.

It's a pretty good trail, and my Dad seems to like it. He's ridden there a bunch over the past few months.

That night and the next day I was still feeling bad, but definitely getting better.

My spirits were at least buoyed a bit by some of the local cuisine.

The Pad Kee Mao at Thai.Pho is really good.

And, of course, Cowboy Chicken is always a winner.

Apparently... allegedly... they cook around 400 chickens a day, on average, per location. That seemed inconceivable to me. It checked out after some rough math, but that many chickens being steadily raised, processed, shipped around, cooked, and eaten every day, just at that one restaurant is mind boggling. I can barely comprehend that, let alone scale it up.

We finished up the trip with a ride at Rowlett. My Dad hadn't ridden there in forever. I think maybe the last time he rode there was with me several visits ago. He used to ride there all the time, but he got hurt pretty badly there once, a few of the trails had gotten eroded so badly that they weren't fun to ride any more, and recently some had been closed. He'd kind-of written the place off, but it turns out there are still plenty of great miles out there, and we had a really good time.

I didn't get a lot of photos, but that's just because we were shredding so hard.

We saw three copperheads on the north side - first snakes I'd seen yet this year, at the time.

I finally did get some photos on our second pass through the south side.

It was actually getting kind-of dark when I took those, but you can't really tell in the shots, which is kind-of unfortunate, as the failing light really set a good mood.

Ahh, Texas. It was really great to see my folks. Hopefully next time I'm not sick for half of it.