March 16 - Day 16

Whew - today was a hard day on the bike.  The wind was blowing right in our faces this morning, then at our sides, but toward the end of the day, it was at our backs, providing a welcome surprise to finish the day.  We had some significant climbing to do in the Davis Mountain range:

If you look at the map titled "where are they now?" on ACRES website, you can tell how desolate the area we travelled through today is.  At the top of one of the mountains sits the University of Texas' observatories. They have built a whole little "town" that supports the research there.   

 

We walked our bikes across a parking lot and ended up with a lot of sand burs - any time we get the bikes off the road - even in the shoulder - we get them in our tires.  They are sharp - if you have your weight on the bike, they puncture your tire, that is why we walk our bike everywhere if we have to get off the road for a break. 

As you can see from the picture, our tires have very little tread on them - just a few patterns, other than that they are slick.  This design helps reduce road friction, allowing road bikes to move down the road faster and with much less effort than mountain bikes or other bikes with big knobby tires.  The trade off is more flats though.   

We ended up in Alpine, Texas for the night - 94 miles from where we started this morning.  Today's high was 85, so the heat along with the miles and climbs have left us very tired tonight. 

   

Tomorrow we enter even more desolate areas - a lot of open road yet to claim in front of us.