Leaving the Foothills

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 ;)