El Camino Real Tour Update - November 5, 2005

Toledo Bend Lake, Texas To Natchitoches, Louisiana
Woke up early the final day – about 5:00 a.m. We went to an unnamed (from our perspective) restaurant just a couple of hundred yard from our under repair Super 8 Motel. This restaurant was also just opening after Hurricane Rita, which was still a category 2 storm when it ripped through Toledo Bend. The crusty, friendly old guy who ran the place had one dish – biscuits and cream gravy with eggs - so we all had biscuits and cream gravy with eggs. We figure we are just helping all of these folks get their cash flow going again.

We were on the road before 8:30 a.m. There are four of us again: Frank, Michael Stevenson, the handcyclist we met in Nacogdoches, Ken Fraley and me. With Mikail as SAG of course. Mikail says he’s glad there’s a handcyclist on the ride again, even if it can’t be him.

Just a quarter mile to the two-mile causeway. Mikail drove behind with flashers until we reached the Louisiana side. What an improvement over Texas Highway 21! Now we are on Louisiana Highway 6. Six-foot shoulders signed as bike lanes the first six miles. Then, shoulders continue all the way to Natchitoches. The only place there were no shoulders were on short bridges and through the towns like Many and Robeline.

While we were hearing warnings about “Louisiana drivers,” we found people to be so incredibly polite and patient as we were passing through the towns where, because of curbs on the streets, there were no shoulders.

Recall that, for the problems we had on Texas Highway 21, there remains in my experience a large pool of goodwill among most Texas drivers toward cyclists. But the folks in the Louisiana were so cautious around us I had to look back and make eye contact to let them know they could pass us. Louisiana Highway 6 is basically outfitted for cyclists on the Camino Real de los Tejas.

We made good time today. We did about 51 miles. We got to our motel on the outskirts of Natchitoches at about 1:30 p.m. We were scheduled to arrive in downtown at 4:30 p.m. With the open time window, Mikail took Michael and Ken back to Toledo bend to retrieve the other cars. They returned in just under two hours. Then Mikail drives downtown to meet the Natchitoches Information Center Executive Director Iris Harper, while the four of us cyclists ride the last four miles into town.

After a few miles on Highway 6 from the motel to town, we find ourselves in the grid (maze?) of the narrow little streets of Natchitoches. We cut over on Rue 2nd to Church Street, and then onto Front Street which faces the Cane River. Two blocks down the street, Mikail and Natchitoches Parish Tourist Commission Executive Director Iris Harper photographed us as we rode up to the Information Center overlooking the river.

After a couple of pictures in front of the Camino Real granite marker in front of the center, we headed down to the river for our final task of the ride. For sixteen days, since October 21 back in Eagle Pass, Texas, when we dipped our rear wheels into the Rio Grande, all of our motivations, agendas and aspirations have been focused onto a single goal. At 4:51 p.m., we dipped our front wheels of our bicycles into the Cane River of the Red River system. The journey is complete!

With that little task out of the way, (the wheel dipping or the sixteen-day journey?) Iris gave us a great tour of the history of Front Street as we headed back up the hill to Dominic’s Restaurant next door to the Information Center for a round of beers on Iris. We finally got the lowdown on the Cane River. In the Spanish days, it was the Red River, which is why the first settlement of the area was located here. In the mid-1800’s, long after Louisiana had become part of the United States, the river jumped channels upstream and the Red River now runs about six miles east of Natchitoches. The Cane River is now a very long ox-bow lake, about 200 feet wide at Front Street. It makes a wonderful front to the very charming town of Natchitoches. Iris lives just a couple blocks away which makes a great walking commute to the center.

Iris was delighted that I knew that Natchitoches is a culinary center. I gleamed that from my wife Clemmie, who is addicted to the cooking shows on PBS on Saturday afternoons (a lot of ironing gets done then.) We convinced Iris to stay and have dinner with us, especially after her husband Dan stopped by to say hello on his way to a nearby sports bar to follow the LSU game. We told Iris we knew she was a football widow for at least the next two hours and couldn’t use the “I have to feed my husband” excuse. She stayed and we had a great time. We even had the same waiter as Mikail and I did for lunch when we ate there in June on our scouting trip. Then back to the motel to rest and get ready for the return trip to Austin tomorrow.

Dear readers, please stay-tuned to this site as Mikail will be posting the best of the hundreds of pictures we took throughout the entire trip and perhaps I will add a paragraph or two of “thoughtful perspective?” I will also comment on several other historic trails I have ridden in Texas in the past year and talk about our next steps to forward bicycle tourism in Texas.

I have thanked and will thank more profusely those who have made this trip possible. I do want to thank again Mikail Davenport and Frank Barrow for their companionship, support and contributions in so many unique and interesting ways, and our photographer and friend Blake Gordon for his early contributions. Blake was at the Apache Pass event, is healing nicely and will work with us on layout for this project and I expect will ride on future retraces.

Thanks to Buddy Garza, Ken Fraley, and Michael Stevenson for putting in some great mileage and being great fun as travel companions. Thanks to Hill Abell of Bicycle Sportshop and Robin Stallings of BikeTexas (Texas Bicycle Coalition) for being such solid partners. Our sincere thank you to all of the many folks in Mexico, Texas and Louisiana who showed us such kind hospitality along the way!

Special thanks to our wives, Clemmie, Kate and Pat for your wonderful support. Thanks to our family cheering sections, especially my three sisters Mary Ann, Jane and Pat. And thanks to all of our wonderful friends for inspiring us to start and continue this exciting (albeit slightly off-beat) journey. Love from all of us and we will be talking to you all soon.

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