East Texas

I meant to visit my folks around Christmas, but random circumstance just kept throwing up delay after delay. I finally pulled myself together, though, in mid February, and got myself over there.

The weather was lovely all the way.

I stopped at Buc-ee's in Alabama.

I've now been to Buc-ee's in 3 different states. Not sure if that's a flex or not...

The day after I arrived, my Dad and I went for a spin around Forney, hitting all the local spots.

As we pulled up to a line of traffic at FM548, I noticed a guy lying in the street, just down the road to our right. We hustled over to help him out if we could, just as another guy and his girlfriend did the same. It turned out that he'd crossed through a little hedge between the gas station and he road, tripped on a rock, and ate it. He was a bit too heavy to get back up on his own though, so my dad and the other guy helped him up. He was a little skinned, but otherwise uninjured. The whole process really wore him out, though. He looked older than me, but younger than my Dad. He couldn't have even been 60. Every now and then, I see something like that, and I remember that I need to stay fit.

May I please be able to.

It had rained a lot the previous week, and I want to say it rained that night as well. When it rains in the Dallas area, your trail options become pretty limited. Goat Island is one of the few reliable ones though, so we went for a ride there.

Just look how high the Trinity was!

The trinity is trying to straighten itself out and create an oxbow. The "island" is the piece of land that's currently getting cut off. The new channel that's forming collects all knds of trash when the water is high.

So much trash.

I guess I caught a thorn somewhere?

No memory of doing that.

I do remember riding through endless puddles. Fortunately, none of them were exceptionally muddy, just wet, but it really slowed us down, which was quite a drag, as we usually just rip at Goat Island.

A couple of days later, I spun around town again.

And the day after, we drove out to Tyler to hit Lindsey park. Lindsey was actually great - probably my favorite Tyler-area trail. There had been a cross country race or something there, and the main trail had confusing ribbons cross-cutting it everywhere. Fortunately they were confined to the A trail. The rest of the system was as-is. I was excited to finally get GPS data of the system. We'd ridden it once before, but a weird strava glitch kept it from recording. This time, though, I double-checked. No glitches.

The next day, I headed home in the wee hours of the morning.

I'd noticed the Hospitality Station in Vicksburg on the way out, and got a photo of it on the way back.

Yeah, Hall of Dicks is a good way to describe a lot of rest areas. Nice to see one formally named "Dick Hall".

Ahh, Georgia.

I love to travel, but travel makes me love being home.