Plan C - And It Kinda Sucked!

The plan when I set out this morning was a leisurely bike ride up the Colorado Bend State Park’s 3.5 mile River Trail which, as you’ve probably guessed, sticks pretty close to the river. At the end of that trail is the relatively short hike-only Gorman Springs Trail. After doing a slow and contemplative one-mile foot-born ambulation on this very pretty trail I would retrieve my bike and pedal the River Trail back to camp where I would put in some serious chair-time with a good book.

Things didn’t quite work out the way I planned.

Plan A fell apart about a mile and a half up the River Trail when I realize I haven’t brought my hiking sticks. . .

Yep, despite the carefully laminated checklist sitting right there inside The Van’s side door, on which the final item is Hiking Stick, I have neglected to bring them anyway. I mean that’s about as bad as a skydiver forgetting to bring his parachute and not realizing it until the plane is nearly at jump-altitude!

Gorman Springs Trail is not especially rugged, but it does include two creek-crossings and despite giving my bum leg the day off yesterday it's still pretty bum and I'm not too keen on attempting to splash around on slick rocks without my sticks.

And yes, sticks as in plural. I’ve been a one-sticker ever since I nearly fell off a cliff in Alaska back in the 80’s, but I’ve recently migrated/upgraded/devolved/downgraded (pick your ‘ed’ of choice) to two sticks. But that’s a story for another post. . .

So I've come up with a new plan for the day that doesn't include backtracking to retrieve said sticks.

This new plan, Plan B, keeps the leisurely-ride-up-the-River-Trail part from the original plan, but even that soon went to hell as well.

Long before I get to this spot, which is a little less than three miles from the campground, I have Stopped and Walked Bike several times already.

And when you add up 36 pounds of Quad-B (My Big Box Beater Bike) and 25 pounds of hiking gear, that sucker takes a lot of walking, up or down hill! And yes, my rule of solo-biker self-preservation out on the trail is that if I would have to walk it uphill, I walk it downhill as well. Doubles the walking but greatly improves the survival chances.

Recently another blogger commented that if you don’t have to get off and walk your bike a few times you picked the wrong trail. Which sounds all well and good, but he’s speaking as an accomplished, and perhaps somewhat crazy, (He hikes at 10,000 feet in knee-deep snow wearing shorts for crying out loud!!) single-tracker on a $1200 bike!

Me? I’m clodding around on a $120 bike, on which I’ve only had a few hours saddle time since last October, and with only one and a half legs! I'm sure if he knew what constitutes a 'walking section' for me he would be rolling on the floor with laughter.

Just as I’m sure little kids and most old men can handle riding down this short little rocky drop one-handed while carrying on a conversation over their shoulder, but it has me grabbing for the brakes and awkwardly dismounting, trying desperately not to drop the too-tall, top-heavy Quad-B in the process.

I sure don’t remember this trail having so many steep ups and downs!

This one I do remember. Except back in 2014 the trail went over the top of this old steam boiler casing which has been repurposed as a culvert. Clearly the water has washed it out one too many times since then

 

and now the trail has been permanently re-routed around it. Which makes for even more of a slog to push the Quad-B up and out of here. (Just like size and right-hand side mirrors, things are steeper than they appear in photos!)

As for that Stop-Walk sign, I was expecting that one too.

This is where the trail dips across the top of the opening to Gorman Cave, but back in 2014 you could still go into the cave, which I did back then, at least for a few feet. (But that isn't part of Plan A, or Plan B this trip. Just not that into caves.) Now it’s been gated off to protect the bats.

Besides being quite a dip to get down to the cave-crossing, there’s also this narrow ledge over the cave's opening to be negotiated.

Notice the crooked little tree in the center of the photo growing out of the ledge?

I don’t remember having to deal with that last time I was here,

but a check of my 2014 photos shows that it was there then too.

It hasn’t grown a whole lot since then, which is a good thing since I have to try to fit myself and the gangly Quad-B between the tree and the rock face. You know, the one with a cable anchored into it to help keep you from falling off the narrow ledge!

I especially don’t remember this section of ledge being missing! This leaves a 3’ vertical drop between where the Quad-B is and where it has to go next, and pretty much nothing to stand on to lift it down but air!

But looking back at the old photo it’s clear that the ledge was incomplete back in 2014 too. Of course back then I was on foot so wasn’t trying to horse 60 pounds of awkward, wheeled crap across the gap either!

OK, let’s just say that by the time I've left the River Trail behind and horsed the Quad-B up the Gorman Falls Trail to the Park Road near the north end of the park, about where the arrow is pointing, all thought of Plan B, piecing together a return route back to the campground from various trails roughly paralleling the road, has died as my wobbly legs dump me on my back where I lay in the hopes that someone will trip over me and perform a little recessitation.

Instead, after self-reviving because apparently no outside help was to be forthcoming, I capitulate, give up on Plan B too, and do the entire return trip, head hanging in shame, on the road.

And not even that is going to be easy! Aside from carrying the extra weight of humiliation on my shoulders, there’s several low-water crossing on this road and each one marks a steep up-hill, every one of which will soon defeat my legs, forcing me to walk while pushing that stubborn behemoth of a Quad-B up every hard-gained foot of altitude.

Back when we lived in the city our neighbor proudly brought home a $2000 road bike.  For that kind of money the thing was so sweet that all he would have to do was think about climbing on and that bike would effortlessly shoot off down the road without him.

I've done a little analysis and it turns out that though the Quad-B does have a little bit of bike DNA swirling around it's gears, it's actually much more closely related to a dump-truck. A loaded dump-truck!

Though the overall trend of the Park Road from entrance to campground is downhill, all the downhill is saved up for that last little bit of twisting, white-knuckled, brake-squeezing, butt-puckering road right at the end.

That last photo was taken about from where the left arrow is pointing.

The Van is sitting in site 45, where the right arrow is pointing.

In between the road falls over the edge of the bluff and reaches the river in the shortest, and steepest, possible way.

Are we having fun yet?

Even with Plan C, that long walk/ride of shame, saving me a half mile or more over Plan B, I still end up covering about 11.5 miles for the day.

Yep, a whole 11.5 miles on a bike, the most energy efficient transportation system man has ever come up with! I can remember the days when I could knock off 20 miles of relaxed, wind-in-the-face, wheeled bliss in less than two hours without even trying, and I'm pretty sure that right now, at this very moment, there's a whole gaggle of old English ladies pedaling, with long-skirted upright dignity, their basketed single-speed cruisers at least that far for a bit of tea and crumpets, but back at camp when the wind blows the 21 speed Quad-B over, I don’t have the energy to get up out of my chair, hell I don't even have the energy to hold my book up into bifocal range! So I just leave her lay there. . .

Legacy Plaza

Goldthwaite is a town in Central Texas. It’s the largest town in Mills County, and as such is the county seat. But still, the population falls well short of 2000. (The 750 square mile county struggles to reach a population of 5000)

Though this town is a scant 10 blocks wide by 10 blocks long and barely has enough people in it to fill a modern movie theater,

somehow they have managed to put together the modern glass and steel Goldthwaite Welcome Center, the Texas Botanical Garden, and Native American Interpretive Center, collectively known as Legacy Plaza.

  

I don’t know how they managed it, I mean there has to be more patron plaques scattered through the grounds than there are citizens in town, but this is an amazing gem tucked away in this tiny town.

The focus here is on the Colorado River 600 to 10,000 years ago.

In the background of this photo is a ring of interpretive panels talking about the life of the people that lived here back then.

To some eyes the foreground might look like a neglected picnic grounds, but what you're looking at is a diverse eco-system of native plants providing a rich, and sustainable, habitat for indigenous fauna.

In between is a creek bed used to collect rainfall off the butterflied roof of the welcome center and feed it into a cistern to support a water-feature that acts as a backdrop to the amphitheater.

A sample of one of the interpretive panels

In addition to the interpretive panels up front, there are others scattered throughout the gardens, some of which include hands-on  projects to go along with them.

Including

this work area for knapping your own flints. Apparently very popular with the kids brought through here in a steady stream of field-trips.

And since no-one was looking (The San Saba Garden Club came for a tour that morning but was gone by the time I got there) I tried a little knapping myself.  (Hint, if you don’t do it right it hurts!)

In addition to an interpretive center, Legacy Plaza has become sort of a community center as well and this large shelter with adjacent bathrooms has been erected in the southwest corner to facilitate that.

The amphitheater seating

All in all, an impressive place and worth a stop if you’re in the area.

Just pull off on the very generous double-wide shoulder of SR-183 between Second and Third Streets and wander on in.

The Regency Bridge, Up Close and Too Personal!

The day after hiking the Spicewood Springs Trail I thought it prudent to give my bum leg a break.

Oh. Did I not mention I was hiking on a bum leg? Well that’s probably because when a guy gets injured he really wants a story to go along with it, ideally a heroic story. Well I don’t have one and frankly, that sucks!

Instead of a riveting tale of battle with dragons or an incredibly brave, dare I say near impossible, rescue of a comely and, of course, exceedingly grateful maiden, (though just what the hell I’d do with an exceedingly grateful maiden I have no idea. . .) I got nuthin’.

I just woke up one day, stood up, took about three steps, and realized my leg hurt like hell. Not only do I have no idea what I did to it, I can’t even pinpoint when. Other than sleeping on it wrong, which is just - well - wrong in so many ways, the likely culprit is when I was lifting the pieces of Elmer’s porch into the trailer so it could be moved. But we didn’t take him to the airport for another couple days after that and I don’t remember being damaged goods (any more than normal anyways) at that point. And considering how much shit that leg was giving me you’d think I would remember.

 Anyways, by the time I headed out to Colorado Bend State Park I was no longer falling to the ground and screaming loud enough to make dogs run for their mommies every time I tried to put weight on the leg, but it still wasn’t quite right.

So Tuesday morning I left the hiking gear stowed and saddled up The Van for some internal-combustion ambulating instead.

Photo by Sean Lynes

About 25 miles northwest of San Saba (pop 1000) is the little community of Regency (pop ~50). Actually, since the Post Office closed sometime in the 1930’s and the last store in 1971, now Regency is more like a named area, a loose collection of driveways and ranch gates, but ranches were, and still are, an important part of the economy in these parts and the nearby single-lane, wood-deck, Regency Bridge is the only crossing on a 30 mile stretch of the Colorado River.

If you’re not from Texas you’ve probably never heard of the Regency Bridge, but if you’re a Texan the Regency Bridge is semi-famous. In fact it features prominently in the opening sequence of the current episodes of the TV show Texas Country Reporter.

The first bridge here, a through-truss built closer to the river, was built in 1903 but fell down In 1924 under a herd of cattle (and a 9 year old boy). The second bridge opened in 1931, another through-truss built on the original abutments, washed away in 1936. The current bridge, a wood-decked single-lane suspension bridge 403 feet long (325 feet between the towers) and about 80 feet above the river, quite a bit higher than the original bridges, was built in 1939 for $30,000. With the exception of one gas-powered cement mixer, a winch-truck and a steam-shovel it was built by hand by workers earning 30 cents an hour,

and working hard manually stringing the nearly 1000 wires that make up the main cables because there was always someone nearby that wanted one of these New-Deal jobs.

The roads have been readjusted since then and the importance of the bridge faded along with its paint. While not impossible to find nowadays you do have to work at it a little.

From the north there’s a sign for the bridge at the intersection of the paved FM-574 and the gravel CR-433. The bridge is about 4.5 miles to the south.

From the south, just north of San Saba at the intersection of SR-16 and FM-500 (Both paved) there's a sign for the Regency Bridge pointing north down FM-500. But the bridge is not on FM-500. To get there you have to turn off of FM-500 onto CR-137 (gravel).  There is a sign marking the county road, but no sign for the bridge. And most maps don’t identify CR-137 at all, including Google Maps which shows the road but doesn’t properly identify it.

Google Maps would trick you into looking for CR-433, which is identified there on the north side of the river, but the river is also the dividing-line between Mills and San Saba counties, which also changes the name of the road.

Once you find CR-137 it’s not quite a mile to the bridge, but this is a narrow and sometimes steep road so if it’s been raining hard, which is not unknown around here, you might want to walk it first before you get stopped by a wash-out and have to try to retreat, up-hill and backwards.

Both CR-433 and CR-137 are narrow with no shoulders, therefore no place to pull off. The exception is a wide-spot in the road, a sort of pull-out, on the south end of the bridge that will accommodate 2 or 3 cars, but this is not a place you want to be trying to get to with a motor-coach or travel trailer.

There are two private driveways near the north end of the bridge but do not park in them!  It pisses off the landowners.

The bridge is surrounded by private property, which is why this is the best I could do for a side-shot of it.

So did I drive The Van across this bridge?

Nope!    Niet!       No way Jose!!

As you can see, from one end you cannot see the other. The way you tell if there’s a car coming across at you is to watch the cables which will dip and sway as the bridge ripples under the weight of a vehicle. If no dipping or swaying feel free to drive on out there, but only if your gross weight is less than 8000 pounds.

Since The Van comes in right at 8000 pounds, or at least did many years ago when I trailered a load of scrap metal over the scales at a recycler, I decided to err on the side of conservancy and stay off the damn thing!

OK, you’re right, that’s just an excuse. Truth is I'm pretty sure The Van comes in more like 7500 pounds with me in it, but the thought of driving out there in The Van scared the crap out of me.

I know that as a member of the male subspecies I’m not supposed to admit things like that, but it is what it is. Hell, just walking out there with nothing more than the weight of my camera and hat scared me bad enough!

But in order to reclaim some tiny little remnant of my male dignity, sidle on out there one half-step at a time I did.

Of course the sight of one of the wooden supports holding up the guard rail, such as it was, dangling out there in mid-air like that didn’t help quell the fear-factor.

Nor did discovering that this saddle, you know the one holding up one of the iron rods that's supposed to be holding up the deck I’m currently standing on, has slipped a couple of inches down the cable since the last maintenance.

I tried moving over to the west rail and ignoring the major defects over there along the east rail,

but you know what? It’s still pretty damn high up here and you can’t see it in the photos, but the wind is brisk (OK more like a gentle breeze) and there’s definitely some swaying going on!

Ahh, that’s better, something solid.

But wait! Between wind-gusts can I actually hear those cables creaking?!

Lopsided!

Here I am, innocently out putting the first hikes on my new boots aannnd. . .

At the top of a particularly steep climb I throw myself down to enjoy the view – OK, more like collapse to catch my breath and let the burn in my legs dissipate –  when I realize that said new boots are lopsided! Either that or my left foot had developed a new twist – but, out of loyalty to my foot I’m going with the boot.

The toe-cap is decidedly skewed to the right.

If I let my mind run free it almost looks like the damn thing is winking at me! (OK, I admit that it helps to be out of breath and have burned most of the morning carbs too)

How cool is that! I have a unique pair of boots. At least I assume they don’t manufacture them like that on purpose. . .

Spicewood Springs Trail, Colorado Bend State Park

It’s sunrise! Or at least it would be sunrise here at Colorado Bend State Park (Texas) if the clouds weren’t in the way.

But I’m not going to let a minor thing like that get in the way of the day! Especially since it’s been 6 months since I blew the hell out of my travel budget and had to mothball The Van while waiting for our finances to catch back up again. It’s also the first time since tramping around Illinois’ Little Grand Canyon last September that I have a chance to take a real hike. (I don’t count the one-mile laps around the property as real hikes)

The couple in the FEMA trailer were quiet last night, I slept well, most everybody’s still in bed, and I’m ready to go!!

Today’s pick is the Spicewood Springs Trail way down in the far southern tip of the state park. Not to be confused with the nearby Spicewood Canyon Trail which stays up on the rim of the canyon while the Springs trail stays down in the bottom.

To get to the trailhead I first have to walk south along the Colorado River. Fortunately I only need to cover about a mile and a half of its 862 mile length before reaching my intended trailhead.

Being the second day of April, it’s firmly into spring around here

but still pretty cool in the mornings and on this day of heavy mists tiny little, watery gems are sparkling all over the place.

And this guy was busily foraging. I first spotted him right at the edge of the trail where he was happily digging up an ant-nest. I could tell he was happy because his back legs were dancing while he jammed his bulldozer nose and front feet deep into the nest looking for any grubs the ants might have tucked away in there.

Armadillos can’t see worth crap so I was able to sneak up fairly close, but even so, it took a long time before I was able to get even this partial shot of his head since when foraging they tend to keep their flat-ended nose right down in the ground as they plow along.

Not doing any foraging yet this morning are these vultures roosting in a dead tree across the river. 

They like dead trees because vultures are big and clumsy so leafy branches just complicate things for them. Even from a dead tree, when they launch themselves you’ll typically hear several sharp crack - crack - cracks as their wings slap against branches and each other. This is usually accompanied by a whooeep – whooeep - whooeep as large amounts of air are forced through their flight-feathers as they work to generate the initial lift their heavy bodies need.

Here in Central Texas we mostly see Black Vultures, but this is still within the considerable range of the read-headed Turkey Vulture and here you can see at least two of them mixed in with the Black Vultures.

And yes, the difference extends beyond head-coloration. While Black Vultures are primarily scavengers and lack the maneuverability, speed and silent flight of most  hunting birds (When in flight you can hear a distinctive swish with every beat of their wings from quite a distance) they will in fact hunt some prey, while the Turkey Vulture is strictly a scavenger.

Despite the distractions along the way, including the sheer joy of being out on a trail again, I do eventually get to the Spicewood Springs Trail. As is typical in this limestone country, Spicewood Creek drops its way from pool to pool. The trail attempts to stick close to the creek down here in the bottom of the canyon

but that’s not always possible in the rugged terrain down here so once in a while the trail gets a little scrambley. The Spicewood Canyon trail, staying up there on the rim, is actually less scrambley and is suitable for intermediate mountain bikers, (Which does not include me!) whereas bikes aren’t even allowed on the Springs trail.

In addition to occasionally climbing onto ledges up above the creek,

the Springs trail weaves its way across the creek a half-dozen or so times.  (If you look just above and left of photo-center you can see the pale-yellow rectangle of the trail marker over there on the other side.) At the current water-flow none of these crossings really challenged my ankle-high, waterproof hiking boots, but in this hard country water tends to flow on top rather than soak in, and though it was only sporadically sprinkling on me (With the added bonus of the occasional tap of small hail later in the day) it might be raining harder upstream so I kept a close eye on the water-level.

The reward, as I worked my way up the canyon, was a series of small pools, each one unique and to be lingered over and savored.

This limestone country is riddled with caves and I have to wonder if this might be the opening to one of them. Not being much of a spelunker (as in not at all!) I’m content with just wondering.

Another feature of limestone county is that water tends to percolate slowly through all that porous rock and when it does come to the surface, though it may be loaded with minerals, it’s also crystal clear. This ‘grove’ of thick, fuzzy plants was growing in the bottom of one of the pools.

I spent a long time sitting at the edge of this pool watching 2 inch fish, probably Guadeloupe Bass, darting out of the grove in single file, sometimes just two but often three at a time, all playing follow-the-leader as the first fish, a harassed female, put her suiters to the test by darting around the obstacles in the clear water trying to see if she could shake them off. If she was successful the lagarts would circle aimlessly then eventually drift back into the grove.

Amongst all this frenetic activity floated 4 inch juggernauts, moving nothing more than the occasional fin until it became necessary to defend their patch of pool-bottom from the darting little upstarts.

There was one stretch of the creek, no more than a hundred feet long, with obvious sign of what appears to be beavers, both fresh sign

and old, but only along this one short stretch and I never did see a lodge or dam.

Eventually the creek crosses out of the park and onto private land so the Springs Trail climbs out of the canyon and joins the Canyon Trail, traversing a whole different terrain up here away from the creek.

But in addition to more uplandy type scenes such as this

the sprinkles/heavy mist still painted little wet mini-scenes such as this bowl-shaped web heavy with captured droplets

and these tiny little bedazzled blossoms.

And I think it’s a rule that when you pass by a blooming yucca you have to take a photo of the thick, waxy blossoms. I don’t know what the penalty is for not doing so, but I didn’t want to find out.

When I climbed up out of the canyon I could have turned riverward on the Canyon trail (the dashed black line) and returned to The Van after a little less than a 5 mile hike, but I chose to continue up the Canyon trail which, in another mile reaches the park road. Just across the road is the Lemons Ridge Pass trail which I followed back down to the river about a mile and a half upstream of The Van, extending the total hike out to about 6.5 miles.

Turned out to be a pretty dang good first day back out on the trails!

Oh, That Can’t Be Good!

 

Just what you don’t want to see pulling into the site next to you. A cheap-ass used FEMA trailer behind a $70,000 truck with a contractor’s generator in the bed!

Because of low standards, questionable materials, potential bio-hazards, little to no maintenance, and hard use FEMA has this rule about only using these two-bedroom temporary-housing units once before they sell them off. But not to the public because they don’t want to take on the liability, they will only sell them in bulk to ‘investors’ who then sell them on, as is, to uneducated buyers.  Sure, these discarded trailers can be picked up cheap, but there’s a good reason for that! They were cheap to begin with.

Notice that the manufactures are so embarrassed about how poorly these things are built they refuse to put their name on them. And since they are designed to be parked cheek-by-jowl with water, sewer, and electric hookups they have no tanks or 12V electrical systems which, along with very few windows (Windows cost money!) and a dormitory style fridge, makes them an exceedingly poor choice as a camping unit.

If you look close at the very right edge of the photo you can see that these particular people set up one of those Coleman ‘privacy rooms’ for toilet and shower function and they carried water from the campground’s single central spigot in open-topped 5 gallon buckets.

Just think of how comfortable and practical a tent-camp they could have put together for only a fraction of what they paid for that useless trailer!

Fortunately this couple only used the generator for about a half-hour twice a day, (to run a microwave maybe?) and left after a couple days.

Could have been a lot worse! Could have been one of those 45 foot, 4-slide, residential fridge-freezer, 400 watt outdoor entertainment center, roof bristling with three antennas and two different kinds of satellite dish coaches that have to run the generator constantly just to say alive.