September 29, 2015 
Kerrville -> Leakey, TX: 62 miles
Time on bikes: 5:31hrs

Today was pretty awesome! We had a delicious breakfast that Fred and Janice made for us. Grits, bacon, toast (with a homemade fig jam), and scrambled eggs… YUM! We knew from our elevation chart that today I was going to be tough. We had some steep hills ahead of us, the steepest yet. The first half of the day was a steady incline with some rollers and the roads basically all to ourselves. There was no town in sight for 40 miles, so we had to make sure we had enough water and lunch to eat on the side of the road. The ride was beautiful...slowly following a river and the temperature was perfect. After the 40 miles of no services we came to a little convenient store where we grabbed a snack and water, knowing that the next half of the day would be only long, steep hills. And they were VERY steep! The first one was the hardest…I thought it would never end. I was going 4mph! Barely crawling & sweating to death haha Joe said he was surprised I didn’t get off my bike. (I’m not sure why I didn’t) BUT I made it! And right over that hill was a fast and basically straight downhill into a valley :) It was so beautiful! Flying down that hill was awesome…seeing the whole valley around us and realizing I was coming up on a turn that said 30mph and I’m going almost 40! I slowed down mom don’t worry. The next hill was just as awesome to go down. I wish I could share that moment with everyone. It was breathtaking! Winding roads through a mountain, no cars, and the most beautiful view ever <3 We finally made it to Leakey (pronounced Lakey) which is also in a little valley. So tomorrow we have 1 more giant hill to climb until we are done with big hills for a while! At the moment we are camped outside of a church. Oh yeah, and we took a "shower" in the clear water spring down the road. It’s a spot where people swim so we figured why not. 

Beautiful morning! 


Ahhhh...that's why they call it Boot Hill





Super steep hill!





September 30, 2015
Leakey -> Bracketville, TX: 72 miles
Time on bikes: 6:25hrs

I'm not going to lie...today was ROUGH. The day was supposed to go like this: Big hill first thing in the morning, a nice downhill for a while, a few hills and basically a downhill all the way into Bracketville (where we are staying). Yeah, well the first climb and downhill was great and beautiful. However, we were riding on this stupid paved road allll day (chip seal)...it was basically gravel. If you can imagine, that took a lot more work than it should have and the downhills weren't really a break for us. Also, we were not very smart and didn't bring enough water :/  For the last 20 miles I was sipping my water & eventually ran out. Water has never tasted so good...we have learned our lesson. Joe just got the new map out that we will be using once we get to Del Rio and there are some days where we will have to be prepared with food and water because we will be camping in the middle of nowhere with no services! 

Besides all of that though, we met the sweeeetest lady, Scooter, at the local market in Leakey. She had me call my mom to tell her I was okay...my mom loved that! & we also had a delicious pancake breakfast w/ coffee. We're getting fancy with this tent camping stuff ;) 








September 28, 2015
Johnson City -> Kerrville, TX: 73miles
Time on bikes: 6:30hrs 

Basically just went up hills, down hills, up hills, down hills…all day. We had lunch in a cute town called Fredricksburg! We went to a cool burger place in town called Burger Burger. Then a random guy ran out of an Italian Restaurant and gave us a loaf of nice bread. He said that he’s a cyclist as well and he knows that we could use some bread :) We ended up eating the bread with dinner that night. While we were calling campsites, we realized that we didn’t look for any Warm Showers in Kerrville & there happened to be one! Fred & Janice, the sweetest couple ever! They both cycle regularly and hosted 30 cyclist last year! Joe and I were there first guests since March…since we are doing this tour a little earlier than most people. Fred & Janice made spaghetti and we toasted some of that bread from earlier. Everything was delicious!! Not to mention we had some sangria & delicious yogurt w/fruit dessert :)

I added the elevation chart so you can see what hills we went through. 












September 23-26, 2015

We had a nice long break in Austin & didn't get on our bikes once! We stayed with our friends Brian & Michelle who were awesome enough to drive us and show us around. It was like Christmas when we arrived. We had packages from family, a new tent, and a few other things waiting at Brian & Michelle's house :) Lots of thanks and love go to: Grandma, Shannon, & my mama for the cards, energy bars & watch/heart rate monitor that I've been using everyday! Also thanks to Nectar Sunglasses for sending me some for my trip!! I went halfway across the country without sunglasses...I'm very happy now! (https://www.nectarsunglasses.com) If you haven't been to Austin then you should plan a trip. Honestly, I didn't expect it to be so awesome & also didn't realize how many outdoor activities there were. The four of us went to a natural spring that basically looked like a swimming pool. We also went wake boarding and hung out by the lake. Joe went flying for the first time since we've been on this trip. For anyone who doesn't know...Joe flies Paramotors...look it up :) It's awesome. Ummm lets see we went out downtown and to the movies. Good times...thanks again Brian & Michelle!

Almosssssst there


Barton Springs


John w/ his Jon boat 



Fin's first time on the boat!! 








Sunday September 27, 2015
Austin -> Johnson City, TX: 51 miles

So of course Joe and I are feeling sick the day that we're supposed to be leaving Austin. Joe had been feeling sick the past couple days & I've had something lingering since we left in the beginning of September. I told myself I would go to the doctor if I was still sick after visiting Austin, so we did. First thing in the morning we went to the doctor and got some prescriptions. After a long morning of that nonsense we headed towards Fredricksburg. It was a rough day, but we managed to get some miles under our belt. I was feeling so sick at one point so we stopped by the only place around & it happened to be a brewery haha. The people there were awesome! They gave me some gatorade & free lunch! We hung out there for a couple hours and realized we should probably get going since we had about 50 miles to go still and it was already 2pm. We didn't make it all the way to Fredricksburg...it was about to get dark so we went down to Pecan Street Brewing to ask people about camping in town. Melanie was sooo helpful and she gave us free soup. It was the sweetest & perfect thing for us to eat considering we're still a little sick.  We talked to a few people and ended up setting up our tent near the river. A PERFECT spot to watch the lunar eclipse :) 



September 22, 2015
La Grange -> Cedar Creek: easy 50miles
Time on bikes: 4:11hrs

Slept in a bit! That felt gooood. I didn't want oatmeal again so we headed straight to Latte on the Square and had one of the best breakfast paninis ever! Joe met a nice lady in line that ended up coming back to the coffee shop with a local journalist, Andy, who asked us about our story. We may be in the local paper haha so cool! We were lazy until about 1030 and then decided we should probably start biking. So we were off to Bastrop & it ended up being a very cool town! It seems that every town we get into there's a sign that says "Most historic small town in Texas"...? Didn't seem that small to me! We had lunch at Gracie's. A local said they have the best burgers and they were DELICIOUS. Except Joe had a cream cheese burger and that just sounds gross. Once again we were lazy and hung out near the river :) I guess we were also waiting for it to cool down. Our plan was to stay in Bastrop for the night because we were doing 2 short days into Austin, but we decided to go about 12 miles further. Just outside of town we came to a bridge that had fallen in and the detour would have been 5 miles out of the way. So we just climbed our way through it :) We made our way down some beautiful back roads and arrived at Cedar Creek where a church let us pitch our tent in their yard! Sounds good to us...we'll be in Austin early in the morning! And then 3 break days!!! Wooooooo







Richards, TX -> La Grange: 91miles
Time on bike: 8:09hrs

Who knew Texas was full of hills?! Long day with literally nothing but beautiful hills and this is just the beginning for us! Our maps that we use on this trip are from Adventure Cycling Association (ACA). They make the best maps for cyclist and take you on the best/quietest roads they can find. The maps have campsites, grocery stores, gas stations, bike shops, restaurants and more that are directly on our route. ASA also has a summary on each map of traffic and road conditions ahead! So basically we trust these maps 100%. With that being said, we have 7 maps that take us from St. Augustine to San Diego and we have gotten through 3 already! We started our 4th map today (Navasota, TX to Del Rio) and it is our first map with an elevation chart! It's really awesome how ASA does that for you, however I'm not sure if I like knowing when the next giant hill is :P We climbed 1,900 ft today with all of the hills combined. It wasn't too bad at all...just really hot. After Austin comes the real hills. Some cyclists have said that those hills were worse than the Rocky's...not sure how true that is but OH BOY am I excited for those days haha. 

This morning I noted that we've almost crossed half of the country and I have only been to a few art galleries :/ and VOILA we happen to be biking through 15 MILES of antiques & art. This event happens twice a year in Round Top, a town with a population of 70 people. It was awesome but there was quite a bit of traffic for the second half of our day. 

At the moment we are in La Grange at an RV park. It's a good end to our long day! It was only $12 for a tent spot, a shower, a POOL, and laundry! Not to mention we are hanging out in the community center with a TV, comfy couch, kitchen, wifi, and coffffeeee! We hit the jackpot here haha and thankfully sleeping in a little tomorrow (7-8am) since we did a long day today. 

a picture from yesterday that I would like to share :)

& this donkey was outside of the camper that we got to stay in yesterday







 Lunch spot!