Wildflower Ride April 2005

Although the Wildflower Ride was officially cancelled, there were a good number of people that decided to go anyway. I had 4 other bikes meet up with me at the Home Depot near my house. We were planning on leaving at 8:00,but Roberto caught some bad Friday morning traffic headed to the meeting spot, so we actually hit the road about 8:20. The plan was for all of us to be in “Flower Sniffin Mode” for the trip down. We headed to Benbrook to pick up Mark, who was waiting for us at the Race Trac station. From there we headed down to Granbury on 377.
	Once we got to Granbury we were pretty much through with roads that even resembled a "Super Slab". We picked up FM 51 and started heading South. It was a nice scenic ride with a few nice curves thrown in for good measure.
We didn't see as many wildflowers as I had expected to see, but we did see some wildlife. Notice which side of the fence these cows are on.
	The roads, and the weather were pretty much perfect. At one point before we got into Llano, it seemed as though someone had closed the roads to cars. On one particular stretch of road, it was over an hour before we even saw a car go by.
We hit Llano at about 2:00. We made our way to Cooper's for some killer BBQ. We were shocked to see the line of people waiting to get their grub. We figured at 2 in the afternoon in as small of a town as Llano that we would just walk right in...Ha fooled us. It took 30min in line to make it to the "Pit". As you can see in the picture, everyone was happy to get to the table. This place is well worth stopping for if your in the area. We had a bit of an interesting situation in the parking lot when we came out from lunch. Seems one of our "Riding Brothers" on a non-metric cruiser decided to park so close to Steve's bike that he couldn't even stand it up fully to get it off of the sidestand, and out of the parking spot. The thought crossed our minds to leave this guy with a permanent reminder of the transgression, but we were all nice and just continued on our merry way.
	After lunch we headed down by Enchanted Rock. Talk about a sweet road. After just having a big lunch, we were in extreme Flower Sniffin Mode on this road. The combination of a full belly, the wildflowers, great scenery, and great weather made this part of the ride awesome. Once we got to Fredericksburg, we made the short gaunt down 16 to Kerrville, then over to Hunt.
The resort was a pleasant surprise (for my wife and I anyway). We had been by the resort a couple of times, but had never stayed there. Just to drive by, it doesn't look like much of a place. Once you step through the breezeway though.....it is really nice. I am looking forward to going back.
	Of course we just HAD to take advantage of the common areas. The visiting went on till well after dark. A few people went back into town for supper. I personally ate enough at lunch that I didn't even want to think about supper ;-)
Saturday morning we all got up and headed back to Kerrville for breakfast at the Cracker Barrel. There was a nip to the air, and it was cloudy when we stared out. After breakfast, it didn't take long for the clouds to clear, and turn into another beautiful day. We headed south on 16 from Kerrville, on our way over to all of the 3's (335, 336, 337). I had never been on that particular section of 16. That is a really nice stretch of road, lots of nice tight curves going up and down the hills. We saw several groups of bicyclists on the roads today. They are in much better shape than I am. Mark rides his bicycle down here every year. He said going uphill is more fun on the motorcycle, but going downhill is more fun on the bicycle. I do believe I'll be sticking to the motorcycle.
	We made one of our stops just east of Vanderpool. From here we headed over to Leakey on 337. There were quite a few motorcyclists out enjoying the weather and scenery today.
This is our stop in Leakey. Things got a little interesting for me at this point. I had been leading our merry little band up to this point. Vicki (my wife) had a little incident at the hotel on Friday night. She fell in the room and hurt her tailbone (cracked, broke, bruised...something) so Saturday she was having real trouble staying on the bike. (and no....adult beverages did not play a role in the incident) :-) At this point she wanted me to take her back to the hotel, so she could rest up for the ride home. Charles and Roberto were kind enough to take up the slack and lead the next leg of the ride. (thanks guy's) I hot footed it back to the hotel and dropped Vicki off. I then....shall we say super hot footed it to try to catch up with the group. Kevin had a few issues of his own and had gone back to the hotel earlier. I thought that I might catch up to him at the hotel, no luck. I had just turned south onto 335 and gone about 2 miles and look in my rearview and who do I see but Kevin. We stopped and chatted for a minute and then headed on down to Camp Wood where the group was having lunch. We got into Camp Wood and found the group at a Mexican Food restaurant in town. We had time to eat and then we all headed out again.
	The ride back to the hotel from Camp Wood was fun and kind of laid back. Kevin and Charles took off from the group and got back to the resort before the rest of us....nobody seemed shocked about that. ;-) Overall it was another great day.
Saturday night a group of us stayed up and shot the breeze for quite some time. We were pretty proud of ourselves too. We built a fire in the outdoor fireplace that would have put "Survivor" to shame. We even had other people coming over "stealing fire" to get their pits going.
Sunday morning everyone got up and headed back to their respective houses. Vicki and myself were the last to leave that morning. Vicki told me to just "Get me home" so we just took the shortest route back home that we could. She didn't even want to stop. We only stopped twice on the way home and one of those stops was just for gas. We got a few sprinkles early in the morning, but then just had clouds with a little bit of sun for the rest of the ride. Overall it was a great weekend. I can't wait for next year. If there is any way at all you can make it, you should really try. You won't be disappointed. Carl