El Camino Real Tour Update - October 20, 2005

Austin to Eagle Pass by Car
El Camino Real de los Tejas! Sixteen days and 650 miles from Eagle Pass, Texas (with a side car trip into Mexico) across Texas to Natchitoches, Louisiana. We are finally underway!

             
Four other historic route trips since last March were just me and my packs and involved me just heading down the road. Close to 1500 miles. The beauty is that I could learn a few lessons to be learned while only hearing my internal voice moaning and groaning. I wanted to iron out a few kinks before I took others out on the road. Today we have a small 9:00 am gathering at (our partner) Bicycle Sport Shop in Austin before heading down to Eagle Pass by car and trailer (with bikes.) Shop owner Hill Abell has been very supportive of cycling as President of International Mountain Bicycle Association and to the Texas Bicycle Coalition (TBC) including service as a past board member. ( TBC is now completing a name change to Bike
Texas - a process started several years ago in reflected in their web address "www.biketexas.org.") Hill has supported Mikail Davenport on his other cycling journeys – Fairbanks to Anchorage, South Padre Island to the Capitol steps.

Robin Stallings, ED of TBC, is our other partner. Robin’s job was to devise the strategy of the Texas Bicycle Tourism Trails legislation for the 2005 session to set a foundation for a statewide bicycle tourism network – which he did. My job is to go out, ride my bike around Texas, and wave to people. A damn good arrangement. It helps to have a wife with a good since of humor who is willing to keep her day job. Yea, Clemmie!

So the four of us, me, Mikail, Frank Barrow, a retired banker, Blake Gordon, a young and already accomplished photographer left Austin and drove to Eagle Pass. Ate at the Cactus, a family restaurant with great food that we found on our scouting trip in June. Then to the Kickapoo Reservation Casino about 8 miles south of town. Good fun. I lost $7, Mikail won $60 (down from his $200 from last June) and Frank ran into a contractor from down the road from his home town on the Llano Estacado in West Texas.

Buddy Garza from Fort McKavett State Historical Park joined us in Eagle Pass in the evening. Tomorrow we visit Guerrero on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. It’s about 30 miles south of the towns of Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras and was the original crossing of the El Camino Real in the early 1700s.

Buddy’s grandparents (father’s side) eloped from Guerrero in the 1920’s and moved (fled?) to Menard, Texas. Buddy’s been there on occasion over the years and knows the place. Supposed to be some interesting structures there. We will report tomorrow. The good news on Buddy’s grandparents is that they returned to Guerrero to visit with the first grandbaby and all was forgiven. Sneaky little trick but apparently it works.

See www.elcaminorealtx.com for a nice map of the El Camino Real system in Texas. We will be following mostly the black line – the earlier cut known as Ramon’s Road.

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