El Camino Real Tour Update - October 31, 2005

Wheelock to near Midway
We rise the next morning, pack up, and drive the 15 miles back to Wheelock, where Frank and Pat are waiting after a great grandkids fix. Ken bades farewell and heads back to and Pat for Glen Rose while Frank and I mount up and make meeting arrangements with Mikail for lunch. We are only doing 45 miles today but there is a cold front with strong thunderstorms forecast for later today.

We start off and within a couple of miles, come to the intersection with Old Spanish Road, which is designated as Highway “OSR. ” Highway 21 in Texas follows much of the alignment of the El Camino Real segment used in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, commonly referred to as “Old San Antonio Road.” This is the road Stephen F. Austin, Sam Houston and Davy Crockett traveled on their entry into Texas in the early 1800’s. Highway 21 takes a cut a bit to the south at this point to serve Bryan-College Station so this old segment of the road gets the OSR designation. To my knowledge, it is the only Texas Highway that has letters, not numbers, as its designation.

We are now straying a bid south of Ramon’s cut of the road, but there are not very good alignments of roads for us to follow the Ramon route at this point. The difference is about 5-10 miles for the most part and like the Spanish, practical considerations are guiding our choice of routes. Both routes pass through or very near the same East Texas towns of historic significance.

Again, a good day of riding. Humid and cloudy at first. Then suddenly winds out of the southwest with gusts of 20-30 mph as the dry line apparently passes. Luckily for us, that is essentially a tail wind and we sail along past the ranches with names like Spanish Grant, and, Camino Real. Folks here are very cognizant of the history of the road. Every five miles there are three-foot high pink granite markers place during the 1936 Texas Centennial. At Normangee (that’s gee as in “gee-whiz”), Mikail is waiting for us with lunch at an eight-foot high pink granite marker for the road.

After lunch, we book as the sky is thickening. We start to encounter passing showers as we cross over I-45, the main Dallas-Houston route. About 8 miles from our day’s endpoint (Midway), the weather is closing in with thunder and lightning behind us. I see no reason to take a chance out on the road in that weather so as we pass Mikail sitting by the road I decide to call it a day. We have a short day tomorrow (37 miles) so we will make up the eight miles then.

We mount the bikes on the rack and pack up just in time. The rains come and really pound us. We are staying off-route again in Madisonville, about 12 miles away, as there are just no motels on OSR. The rest of the motels after tonight will again be “on-route.”

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