With a long day of riding ahead of us, we packed up our campsite, and set our GPSes to Salt Lick Barbecue in Driftwood TX. The morning started out pretty cold, but it warmed up to a decent temperature. The further we got to central Texas, the better Texas got. The trees and vegetation did shrink a little from eastern Texas and became more of what I expected of Texas. But the roads had a great amount of curves and hills with still considerate drivers. There were several occasions where someone would pull over for us even when we didn’t want them to. One strange thing was that we started to see more and more German places. I didn’t realize that Texas had a big German cultural population.
Salt Lick was larger than I had expected and seeing signs for waiting areas made it appear to get busy. Thankfully for us, we arrived at about 11:30 which was just before the big post-church lunch rush. I ordered the three meat plate with sausage, beef brisket and a pork rib. The waiter asked us if we wanted a jalapeño on the side. We were a little confused about what to do with it, but we said “sure!” We later just decided to cut it up into slices and eat it with bites of meat. I have to say that this was some of the best barbecue I’ve ever had. The meat was tender with a perfect balance of bbq and smoke flavor. One thing I was surprised by was how mild their jalepeno bbq sauce was. They put it on the side and I did add it to some things, but it wasn’t hot. The meal came with a potato salad that was almost like mashed potatoes. The other side dish was coleslaw. It was vinegar based instead of mayo and it was refreshingly delicious with just the right amount of spice. Judging by how good the meal was, I had to indulge in the half blackberry, half peach cobbler with ice cream. The cobbler was mostly actual fruit with a proper amount of sugary syrup in it. Sadly, I could not finish the massive bowl.
Shortly after Salt Lick, we ran across a town called Fredricksburg. This place had a beautiful main street and also quite a bit of German businesses. All in all, central Texas continued to be great. The further west we travelled, the shorter and more sparse the vegetation. Eventually the beautiful central Texas landscape gave way to barren and rocky looking ranches that extended for miles and miles. This just kept going and going and going. The day had been going marvelously until this point. By now I just had a feeling of boredom and discontent.
One interesting thing did happen in this stretch of no-man’s land though. An overcast sky started to develop and it looked a little odd. The bottom of the clouds almost appeared similar to the surface of a golf ball. There were smooth dimples that went up into the clouds. A side effect of these clouds was an oncoming chill.
Eventually we finally started to approach Del Rio, the border town that we would pass through to get to Seminole Canyon State Park. This approach finally gave me the second wind I needed in mental energy. Del Rio was also a place that we desperately needed to refuel at. Along the way of the desolate ranches we had switch to our reserve tanks. The town’s fringe was really quite unimpressive and we just used it as a gas stop instead of venturing further into town.
From Del Rio it was on to Seminole Canyon State Park. There really wasn’t anything in particular there that we wanted to see, but it was a good stopping point on the way up to Roswell. Upon arrival, we discovered that it was incredibly beautiful. The view included vast expanses of desert with an attractive canyon slicing through the landscape. A picture, like in many of the instances on this trip, simply cannot capture the grandeur of the scene. To top it off, the facilities included clean restrooms, hot showers, electricity and even WIFI! While we were relaxing in the picnic area, two other road trip bikers pulled up to check out the park. Jan and Joelle were from Massachusetts and were riding bikes in a loop around the US as well. Good folks, they were. All in all, I would have to say that it was the best campground we’ve been to on this trip.
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