El Camino Real Tour Update - October 30, 2005

Apache Pass to Wheelock
This morning it is Mikail doing the invocation back at the pass at 7:30 a.m. sharp, and then a fabulous breakfast of eggs, pancakes, breakfast meets and my favorite: cowboy coffee over the campfire. After lots of thank you's, we packed and headed out of Apache Pass at 9:33 a.m., just a little behind our scheduled departure. We headed north on CR 428 (418 on some maps) and crossed the beautiful 1912 iron truss bridge that is being decommissioned. A replacement is being planned, apparently on an adjacent alignment. The bridge will hopefully be preserved as a bike/ped bridge.

We pedal past one of the markers for one of the three Spanish mission sites that were established within a couple of miles in the area in the 1700’s and into beautiful Sunday morning country road scenery with rolling hills that allow you to see for miles. We then find ourselves in the middle of a slow moving “Wide Load” convoy of two large flatbed trucks with giant industrial pieces on them and a half dozen escort and utility vehicles. They have to crawl under any low utility lines they encounter so we leap frog each other for a while.

Since the Little River Crossing on FM 1600 south of Cameron has too much brush, we stop to rest in Cameron and Mikail and I head to the US77-US190 crossing in the SAG vehicle to get our water. Mikail gets as far under the bridge as he can, then I get out and head down through the brush to the water.

The sand bank is at an angle of about 30 degrees and as I step down to the waters edge I break through the dry top layer (an inch or so?) and sink past my ankles to almost mid-calf. Quicksand! On a 30 degree surface? My sinking legs are proof that it is so. Those of you growing up in the Midwest would find it slightly similar to that crusted snow that you break through.

Now I’ve never had any format training on dealing with a quicksand emergency. But I have seen a lot of movies. All I have to do is thrash around wildly and scream “Help, quicksand!” Right? But instead, I panic, fall to my knees and forearms to increase my surface area, and gingerly start crawling back up the bank. And yet, somehow I survive.

So I go down through the waist-high brush to a rock on the bank and reach down to get the water sample. Luckily, the water moccasins and rattlesnakes are all off somewhere else and I eventually make it back to the car and Mikail. I need to check the Spanish journals again to see if they mention quicksand. River crossings could get interesting from here on.

The Wide Load folks finally head up toward Waco on US 77 and we cut east of FM 485 just north of Cameron. Frank, Ken and I settle down each in his own pace. We start knocking out some miles through the still nicely rolling countryside, with as much as a quarter mile separating us at times. Finally, we spill out onto the Brazos River plain and there is Mikail on the east side of the river beneath the bridge, waiting with another great lunch of pasta and trimmings.

This is the crossing that apparently gave the Brazos its name, At this point the Little River joins the Brazos. When Ramon and the other Spaniards crossed it in the early 1700’s, they didn’t cross downstream of the river junction. It was easier to cross two smaller rivers above the junction. In most years, the Little River flows into the Brazos at about a 1:2 ratio – making it the biggest contributor and roughly equivalent. The two rivers upstream of the junction became the “Arms,” hence the name Brazos de Dios, or “Arms of God.” In time the name was shortened to the Brazos for the larger stream, whose basin extends all of the way through West Texas into the Lubbock area. The smaller river somehow obtained the name “Little.”
Once ferries started operation in the early 1800’s, crossings moved below river junctions as it was cheaper to operate just one ferry. Same with building highway bridges in the 1900s.

There is a beautiful old truss bridge on the Little River just above its junction with the Brazos. Even bigger than the one at Apache Pass. It’s next to a mount called Sugar Loaf Mountain. The road connecting it to the Brazos River Crossing is such coarse gravel that Lucille told me it tears up car tires. So we are avoiding it on our bicycles, although we can see the mount to our right as we approach the Brazos bridge on FM 485. Lucille also says the road is scheduled to be paved in a year or so. Once it is, we can reconfigure a much more authentic El Camino Real route for the bicycle tours.

After lunch, Mikail takes Ken and his bike back to fetch his car at Apache Pass. Frank and I start east again and get a couple of miles when a nice old Ford pickup passes us and makes a U-turn. As we pass by the driver takes our picture so I make a U-turn to go talk to him. He saw me hauling my trailer on my bike and said he liked what we were doing. I ask his name, it’s Del, and I tell him we’ll tell everyone that we saw him.

I am hauling my trailer with the yellow duffel stuffed with two pillows because it really increases my visibility from behind. I also use it at times to demonstrate what a self-contained configuration looks like. It’s nice not to have all the camping gear in it for a change.

No problem getting through Hearne except we had to pedal up the overpass as a stopped train was blocking the grade crossings. Hearne has a rail yard right through the middle of town.

We are now coming off of the Brazos River plain as we climb out of Hearne and suddenly I see pine trees everywhere. Sure we are headed for East Texas, but I didn’t expect it to come meet us so soon. Frank says he recalls ranches up the road and sure enough, as we climb some more, the pines disappear and we are in post oak country with broad pastures and a number of embryo fertilization ranches – for cows. Eventually, the local Hearne traffic drops off, the shadows get long with the coming sunset (time change – we “fell back” one hour last night) and even though we are still climbing, Frank and I have a beautiful ride into Wheelock where with perfect timing, Mikail shows up after dropping Ken back in Apache Pass and Frank’s wife Pat comes to take him to see their five granddaughters in College Station. We did a respectable 64 miles today.

Did I mention the ages of Frank and Pat’s granddaughters? They are three, two, two, two and two. That’s right, quads and one “big” sister (a year is everything in sib dynamics.) My day has ended and Frank’s is just beginning – Pat says the girls are really calling for him.

We are staying “off-route” about 15 miles in Calvert at Miss Dixie’s B & B. Actually we stay at the B & B annex that owner Fran Lamb calls the “track shack.” It is on the same busy rail line that runs through Hearne and trains come through about every hour passing within 100 feet of our house. The Train de Jour seems to be mostly coal trains from Wyoming heading for different Texas power plants. We have a great conversation with Fran about El Camino Real, Calvert and her weekly radio show on NPR down at College Station. Ken shows up – he has accepted our invitation (pleas?) to spend the night with us. While I am talking with Fran, Mikail visits our friend John, the owner of the very nice Calvert Hotel next door. It is an old two-story “Drummers” hotel, drummers being an archaic term for traveling salesmen. Never heard that term until I met John. Calvert has a lot of old architecture and a very nice restoration effort downtown and around town.

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