TDtrans
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You got him on that one Jason looks like you had good day on 2 wheels
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GixxerJasen's 2026 Grand Tour of Texas
- Thread starter gixxerjasen
- Start date
Not been good for riding lately. After my Third Saturday Breakfast ride, I had a week of On-Call at work and then the weather has been sunny during the week and rainy for the weekends. This weekend looked no different. However, on Friday I looked and it was 25% chance of rain for Saturday, and 95% chance of rain for Sunday. I'll take those Saturday odds and do my East Texas loop that I need to complete.
I got out of bed early this morning and when I rolled the bike out of the garage at 6:30AM and man, was it ever dark out. Usually the sun is lighting up the sky but today there's a very thick cloud bank overhead blocking it all out. I'm not sad now, since I picked to start my day running down I-20 to get out of my general area. If it's dark, I don't need to sightsee, so making miles is the way to go. I got about 30 minutes from home and popped out from under the cloud bank and it went from nighttime dark to bright sunshiny morning in about 30 seconds. The sun would flirt with me for the rest of the morning and come out in force in the afternoon. Aside from some light mist when I left and right after breakfast, I didn't hit any rain at all.
Last time out, I finished my plan early, and elected to pick up two more stops in Kemp and Canton, in order to seal in my finisher status. I'm happy to report that these have all been tallied up and I have the star on my rider status page indicating that I'm an official finisher. That said, I knew it would come into play today and it did. I started off my day by passing within three miles of the Canton stop and later my route would take me straight through Rusk as well. I'm not disappointed though, just happy to have that status sealed up.
My last ride, I'd intended to attend the Two Wheeled Texan's Third Saturday Breakfast in Midlothian. Turns out, my route today taking me East is ideal for the TWT Second Saturday Breakfast in Tyler, and it's at La Plazita, which fits in with my meal theme for this tour. I arrived early and decided to alter my plans of getting gas after breakfast to getting gas before. I still arrived early at the restaurant and while there were a lot of cars, I was the first motorcycle. Finally, one guy showed up on a BMW. Then another two BMW's showed up, and then another. I was feeling very out of place, but then a Yamaha Tracer 9 showed up and we made a BMW sandwich. We almost tied them for number of cylinders, but the Tracer is missing one.
Good time talking motorcycle stuff (Bikes, trips, routes, destinations, plans, etc) with the folks there and I very much enjoyed my breakfast. It was so huge that I pretty much skipped lunch. Chilaquiles with verde sauce, beans, and over easy eggs. I paid to substitute Carne Asada for the usual ham and was very glad that I did.
The next stop was the Gladewater Museum. One criticism that folks have with the Grand Tour of Texas is the amount of recycling of stops used. This is one of them. I hit this one with the DRZ back in 2023.
As I was setting up for the photo, a lady ran out of the museum and brought me some brochures. She said she knew I was probably going to head out quickly, but gave me a list of things going on in Gladewater in case I come back. Nice lady.
After that I took the roads over to Jefferson TX. Jefferson was on the list in 2023 as well, but a different location in town. This year it's the Jefferson General Store. Nice truck parked out front. I lucked out and someone was pulling out of the front spot just as I arrived.
Time to head south close to the Louisiana border to the Flying G Motorcycle Museum. This is a super nice looking museum in a tiny town where it looks very out of place. There's literally a run down general store across the street and a nondescript restaurant next to the store and that's it. Comparing with google maps, they've taken over a metal building and given it a serious face lift with all the brick. From what I could see through the windows, it's a very nice looking museum. I was wishing I had more time to go in and look around but I needed to be home to take my son to work and was already running a little behind.
It was time to burn back toward home for one last stop close by. Lots of police action going on for sure. I came to this one road that had a sweet downhill right curve, brand new pavement, nobody on the road with me, big wall separating my side from the oncoming side. It was begging me to rail it. I twisted the throttle but showed restraint, and thankfully I did, because there was a sheriff car right around the corner hidden from view. I was exceeding the limit but thankfully he was looking for bigger faster fish. Also came across several State Troopers in a construction zone.
I finally made it to Kemp for a photo of the Calaboose, an old jail from the area. Turns out, Kemp is having a spring festival and the Calaboose is in a field that is being used for parking for the festival. Thankfully I was able to park on the road in front of it and get my photo before departing the madness of the area.
Here's the sign next to it. Hard to read so I'll type it out.
That's it for today, 405 miles ridden. Low temp of 65F, high of 85F. When I got home there's water everywhere, and my family says I missed some short thunderstorms. It's always a good day when the rain suit stays in it's bag and isn't needed.
I got out of bed early this morning and when I rolled the bike out of the garage at 6:30AM and man, was it ever dark out. Usually the sun is lighting up the sky but today there's a very thick cloud bank overhead blocking it all out. I'm not sad now, since I picked to start my day running down I-20 to get out of my general area. If it's dark, I don't need to sightsee, so making miles is the way to go. I got about 30 minutes from home and popped out from under the cloud bank and it went from nighttime dark to bright sunshiny morning in about 30 seconds. The sun would flirt with me for the rest of the morning and come out in force in the afternoon. Aside from some light mist when I left and right after breakfast, I didn't hit any rain at all.
Last time out, I finished my plan early, and elected to pick up two more stops in Kemp and Canton, in order to seal in my finisher status. I'm happy to report that these have all been tallied up and I have the star on my rider status page indicating that I'm an official finisher. That said, I knew it would come into play today and it did. I started off my day by passing within three miles of the Canton stop and later my route would take me straight through Rusk as well. I'm not disappointed though, just happy to have that status sealed up.
My last ride, I'd intended to attend the Two Wheeled Texan's Third Saturday Breakfast in Midlothian. Turns out, my route today taking me East is ideal for the TWT Second Saturday Breakfast in Tyler, and it's at La Plazita, which fits in with my meal theme for this tour. I arrived early and decided to alter my plans of getting gas after breakfast to getting gas before. I still arrived early at the restaurant and while there were a lot of cars, I was the first motorcycle. Finally, one guy showed up on a BMW. Then another two BMW's showed up, and then another. I was feeling very out of place, but then a Yamaha Tracer 9 showed up and we made a BMW sandwich. We almost tied them for number of cylinders, but the Tracer is missing one.
Good time talking motorcycle stuff (Bikes, trips, routes, destinations, plans, etc) with the folks there and I very much enjoyed my breakfast. It was so huge that I pretty much skipped lunch. Chilaquiles with verde sauce, beans, and over easy eggs. I paid to substitute Carne Asada for the usual ham and was very glad that I did.
The next stop was the Gladewater Museum. One criticism that folks have with the Grand Tour of Texas is the amount of recycling of stops used. This is one of them. I hit this one with the DRZ back in 2023.
As I was setting up for the photo, a lady ran out of the museum and brought me some brochures. She said she knew I was probably going to head out quickly, but gave me a list of things going on in Gladewater in case I come back. Nice lady.
After that I took the roads over to Jefferson TX. Jefferson was on the list in 2023 as well, but a different location in town. This year it's the Jefferson General Store. Nice truck parked out front. I lucked out and someone was pulling out of the front spot just as I arrived.
Time to head south close to the Louisiana border to the Flying G Motorcycle Museum. This is a super nice looking museum in a tiny town where it looks very out of place. There's literally a run down general store across the street and a nondescript restaurant next to the store and that's it. Comparing with google maps, they've taken over a metal building and given it a serious face lift with all the brick. From what I could see through the windows, it's a very nice looking museum. I was wishing I had more time to go in and look around but I needed to be home to take my son to work and was already running a little behind.
It was time to burn back toward home for one last stop close by. Lots of police action going on for sure. I came to this one road that had a sweet downhill right curve, brand new pavement, nobody on the road with me, big wall separating my side from the oncoming side. It was begging me to rail it. I twisted the throttle but showed restraint, and thankfully I did, because there was a sheriff car right around the corner hidden from view. I was exceeding the limit but thankfully he was looking for bigger faster fish. Also came across several State Troopers in a construction zone.
I finally made it to Kemp for a photo of the Calaboose, an old jail from the area. Turns out, Kemp is having a spring festival and the Calaboose is in a field that is being used for parking for the festival. Thankfully I was able to park on the road in front of it and get my photo before departing the madness of the area.
Here's the sign next to it. Hard to read so I'll type it out.
That's it for today, 405 miles ridden. Low temp of 65F, high of 85F. When I got home there's water everywhere, and my family says I missed some short thunderstorms. It's always a good day when the rain suit stays in it's bag and isn't needed.
It's time again for me to work on my 2026 Motorcycle Grand Tour of Texas. I've gottena all the local stuff, so most of what is left will require weekend trips. I've been eyeballing those up in the panhandle for a bit as I'd really like to make that ride before the full heat of Texas summer is upon us.
I've been trying to get weather, work, and home life aligned to make this trip work out and the first weekend of May looked mostly good. Nice weather was predicted for the weekend, but the storms during the week looked to persist through Friday and all the cities on my route were showing 99% chance of rain and cool temperatures all day Friday for my ride out. I decided to pull the trigger and do it anyway.
It did indeed rain most of the day Friday, however, as I was wrapping up work and getting ready to leave, we were having a dry spell at home. I suited up for cooler temps and rain and got on the road trying to also beat DFW traffic.
On my way out, I made a mistake and took the wrong ramp on the Texpress lanes and ended up taking 114 instead of 183. Normally this wouldn't be an issue as they'll both get me through. The downside to 114 is that it stops being a freeway at I-35W. As I was approaching this and noticing the traffic at the light, it seemed a bit heavier than normal. That's when I remember what's on the other side of I-35W and also remember what is going on this weekend. On the other side is Texas Motor Speedway and it's NASCAR weekend. Thankfully, it's mostly just the later arrivals of folks in their RV's as the racing doesn't seem to begin till Saturday. I make it through ok, still, it takes me 1.5 hours to fully cross the entire metroplex.
I keep checking the radar and the rain is definitely there but it's looking like my route is running just north of all of the rain so I'm happy with that.
So, it's not an adventure ride until something goes wrong, otherwise it's just a ride. Well, it looks like I'll be having a little adventure on my way out. About 3 hours from home I'm running good and then the bike loses power on me. I try to do a rolling restart but it's no good. This happened right at an exit so I pull in the clutch and coast off shifting down to neutral before I come to a stop on the side of the service road.
I turn the bike fully off, then back on and hit the starter and I get the dreaded "FuelPumpFailure" warning. I had this same warning that left me on the side of the road last year. Looks like this.
This is a known issue with these KTM pumps, which is why I spent the money on the "Good forever" pump from Quantum when I replaced it after the previous failure. New pump doesn't have but a couple of thousand miles on it so I'm definitely not happy to be sitting here dealing with it again. Additionally, I'd tried the lucky deal of "If you don't have a spare, you'll need one, but if you carry one, you'll never need it" by carrying a brand new spare Quantum fuel pump, but that didn't work out because here we are.
I have a little hissy fit of anger then start thinking of my options at this point.
1. I have a spare pump and a tool roll, change the pump here on the side of the road and continue my plans.
2. Change the pump and go home and put the bike up for sale since I can't depend on it.
3. Set the bike on fire right where it sits.
Fun as it would be, I dismiss option 3, which means now I need to get down to being a roadside mechanic. I'm familar with the process and it's supposed to be possible to pull the pump assembly without fully removing the tank. I can remove the tank but it's about 6000 fasteners to do so, versus just a couple to pull it as is. It looks like I'll still need to drop my belly pan as it's potentially in the way.
Plan in place, it's time to get started. I put the bike up on the center stand and start cutting off the fuel valves. I turn off the left one going for the left side of the tank and the pump. I walk around the bike to the valve on the right side that flows through the crossover hose and....waitaminute. Why is this side off?
Think think think. It is odd how long I've been running at 4 bars of fuel on the guage. The sensor for the guage is on the right side. If I drained the left side, it's out of fuel, hence no fuel pressure, hence the sensor sending to the computer there's no fuel pressure and the computer triggering a fuel pump failure error. Let's open both sides and see what happens. *Sounds of fuel whooshing/gurgling as the tanks equalize.*
I give it a mintue and then start the bike and thumb the starter and she fires to life. Low and behold, now, instead of 4 bars of fuel, I have 2. Lucky me, and I guess it's too sophisticated to ask KTM to put in a "IdiotConnectedToHandlebars" error code instead.
Alright, let's find a gas station! 5 miles away? Yes please!
Unfortunately my route is the same slog I always end up taking when heading west, so it's pretty boring most of the way, but at least there's my favorite burger place, JT's in Childress TX.
The usual bacon cheese burger and fries always hits the spot.
Also, I've heard the arguments on how to put bacon on a burger. There's those in the X camp and those in the side by side camp, but you are both wrong. This is how you bacon a burger!
After dinner, it's a nice run to Caprock Canyon, my campground for the weekend. True to what I saw on "Adventure Piggy's" youtube videos, the automatic gate isn't so automatic for motorcycles. Thankfully, over the weekend I never had to wait more than 5 minutes for someone to come along to trigger the gate for me. Tonight it's someone on their way out and I'm able to get in and find my campsite. Thanks to being far west, I am albe to arrive at sundown and have enough light to figure out how to pitch my brand new tent. I did preassemble it once in my living room but it's not the same as doing it for real.
New tent, and my new Flextail Mini Pump 3 lighting things up nicely.
30" wide mattress is a tight fit with all my gear, but it keeps me comfy at night so I don't complain.
Overnight temps got down into the 40's and I tell you, I had the best night's sleep I've ever had camping, or probably in the last month of regular sleeping. I slept soundly and when I woke up at 6 and my body asked for another hour, I granted it that wish. I dragged myself out of the tent fully refreshed and I have to say, this is not so much of a bad view to wake up to.
Time to go collect some tour stops. I stash my Jesse side bags in my tent, suit up and get on the road. My trip out of the park would not be so easy though. To get out, I have to take the road that goes down into the bottom of the canyon, and it's got a steep section with a right hand turn at the bottom to a bridge, which is obscured by a tree on the right side. As I'm coming down I spot a bison standing on the bridge. Caprock Canyon State Park is home to the State bison herd and one big guy is standing on the narrow bridge right in my way facing me.
I hit the brakes and am awkwardly stopped on the steep downhill holding the clutch and the brake. The bridge is narrow with guardrails on both sides. These animals are usually pretty doscile, but there's plenty of videos on youtube of tourists angering them and it not ending well. I don't really have a lot of room to go around and I'm afraid if I move forward, it might feel threatened all pinned in and decide to charge me and I don't have a lot of places to go at this point. I've also been told there's plenty of Mama bison with babies around, I don't see a baby, but still...
So, we have a bit of a standoff, me staring at the bison and the bison staring at me, while I wait for a bigger vehicle to come along and maybe I can sneak by with them. It takes about five minutes and a truck approaches from behind me. Thankfully, it's one of the park rangers. He see's the situation, pulls up next to me laughing and takes the lead. Faced with the truck driving right at him slowly, the bison turns around and ables across the bridge and the truck herds it off to the left leaving me space on the right to zoom by. I give the ranger a friendly wave and I'm headed for the gate. Less than five minutes for someone to be coming in and I'm out of the park.
My first stop of the day will be Turkey Texas, and it looks like Garmin has some "Adventurous Routing" for me. YES PLEASE!
Most of this dirt is really good and the riding is very nice. However, there's sections of soft sand that get the big KTM into a bit of a wiggle woggle here and there. Most not an issue but there's a few spots that cause some butt clenching situations.
In the above photo, off to the right, is the worst section I hit. I almost ate it twice there, on the gas leaning back but the front plowing and dropping the bars before catching and coming back upright. When the sand wasn't trying to get me, it was the deer. I had several deer run out of the brush in front of me, including one who made it to the safety of the left side of the road before changing it's mind and deciding the right side was safer while dodging my front tire. I had some fun and excitement for a bit but was happy to get back on the pavement a short distance from my destination.
Turkey, Texas, is the hometown of Western Swing legend Bob Wills of the band "Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys." The tour stop is a replica of his old tour bus.
Also on this corner is the well maintained first Phillips 66 gas station built in Texas.
Complete with it's own historical marker:
There's a bonus historical marker right next to it around the bankhead highway.
After that I gas up and head to my next tour stop. The roads there are two lanes between farm land and I spend periods of over 10 minutes riding not seeeing a single other vehicle. I do have a short 5 mile stretch on I-40 which was kind of unavoidable. Soon enough though, I arrive at "The Stuidio Coffee" in Wheeler Texas.
I've been on too big of a hurry to manage to spend any money at any of the locations on the tour so far, and I've missed operating hours at a few locations. Today, it's 10:30AM and I need breakfast and a coffee so I head inside. I'm curious if it's an actual coffee shop with all the stuff for sale on the sidewalk, but the lady inside assures me she can indeed get me a hot latte and apologizes for all the craziness of the city wide garage sale going on.
I've always said that people don't like Starbucks Coffee because the coffee is nasty, they just like toppings. This was sitting on the counter so it got a chuckle from me and I had to grab a photo.
No breakfast, but I grab the last chocolate chip cookie she's got, then head across the street to enjoy my breakfast on the square under a big shade tree.
Not a bad view in a cute little town.
Next up is a stop that isn't part of the tour, but one I've had on my maps for a long time. I put it on the maps since I come out this direction often, but it's far enough off the route that I haven't visited it yet, since it usually adds at least an hour to a trip that I'm just trying to get through to get to the "Good Stuff" in New Mexico and Colorado. Today, however, it's sitting almost right between my tour stops, so I'm routing there on a custom route that I picked out to find some more dirt.
I find me a little bit of worn two track running through the windmills. I'm riding wary, but there's no surprise sand like earlier, it's all just good riding.
I finally get to my point on the map that I've been looking to hit for years and finally I'm here!
Yea, not much to look at, but I enjoy visiting iconic movie locations and this is one of them. I do seem to have a theme going of visiting Tom Hanks locations and this is one of them. At the end of the movie "Cast Away" Tom stops here to contemplate his options when he meets the pretty red haired lady wh tells him where all the roads go.
There's a lot more windmills out there these days though.
Right before the intersection scene, Tom returns the package with the wings on it to the original sender. Lots of times with movies, things aren't geographically located correctly, but in this case they are, as the ranch is just five miles north of the intersection.
The sign has been redone from what is shown in the movie, but I like it and it's well done.
I ride a bunch of other dirt roads and make my way to my last tour stop of this trip, Antelope Leather in Borger Texas.
I like these city murals and since this one was right next door I pushed the bike over and got a picture with it.
On my route the day before I passed one of the big AI datacenters that is being built. We actually drove past it back in November and it was a mass of lights and tons of cranes, so we looked up what was being built. Today, I'm riding on dirt roads past huge cattle farms and cotton fields and I see something similar off in the distance. I see the huge structure and so many cranes, this has to be the same thing, so I reroute and go ride by the construction site.
This is pretty impressive being built here out in the middel of nowhere. The structure I see looks to be one of about 6 pads under various stages of construction, this thing will be huge.
I looked it up later and it's "Project Matador" being developed by Fermi America. The interesting thing is that most of these AI datacenters put a huge strain on the local power grid, so many are being built with this in mind. This one will generate it's own 17GW of energy using their own on site infrastructure of natural gas, solar, and even their own nuclear power plant apparently. That's quite the outlay of infrastructure. On the interesting side, this is a good way for folks to find tech jobs in the future but still live out in the country and not be forced into city life.
I'm keeing my food theme of getting Mexican food on my tour going, and I've got two Mexican restaurants in my GPS in Amarillo to stop at. Thanks to sleeping in and my general meandering, I'm going to miss out on the little mom and pop place that I really wanted to go to because they close at 3PM and I'd arrive just after closing. Instead I head to a well known locatioin in a section of town with a lot of different restaurants that is quite busy at this time of a Saturday afternoon. Braceros Mexican Grill is the location and I have to say, this is how every restaurant should bring you chips and salsa.
For my meal, I decide to try the Carne Guisada. It's basically a slow cooked stew of beef tips and potatoes with a mix of other vegetables. It differes from a normal beef stew in that it uses Mexican spices to give it a unique flavor and peppers cooked in add quite a bit of heat. It's pretty delicious and I end up dumping a bit of my rice in the leftover sauce to get all that flavor out of the bowl.
Homemade corn and flour tortillas top it off.
After lunch, Palo Duro Canyon State Park is on my way back to my campsite so I am routed there to ride through. Too bad I left my paperwork for my campsite in my tent because the lady at the gate is trying to find ways to comp my entrance into this park. I tell her that lesson learned, but I'll pay the eight bucks for the entry, I'm sure it's going to good use and will be worth it.
I parked at the visitors center and had a good chat with the ladies inside about the wildlife at both parks, got my magnet and then was on my way riding through the beautiful park.
There's even another historical marker there too.
After finishing up in the park, I ride about 10 more miles of dirt before getting on the slab for most of the rest of the way back. I stopped for a last gas stop in Tulia Texas, which appears to be the junk capital of the country, as it looks like everything unwanted just gets sent here. I called and left a message for my wife letting her know I was at my last stop as there's no cell service at the campsite.
The town just outside Caprock Canyon State Park is Quitaque which I'm told is pronounced "Kitty Cue" and they've got a mural for a photo opportunity too.
This sheep ranch on the way in has old bicycles all along the sections of fence.
A less than five minute wait to get in the gate and I'm riding these gorgeous roads through the park.
My only bison encounters are ones off the side of the road thankfully. Soon I'm back at my camp to heat up a freeze dried meal (Burn ban so no campfire) while chatting with some other folks and enjoying the setting sun in the canyon.
For security and ease of loading in the morning, I roll the bike back by my tent.
I also took some time to enjoy that the prickly pears are all in bloom.
I then made my way into my tent to spend some time reading my book before going to sleep. Today the weather had started off in the upper 40's and ended up in the lower 70's. I wouldn't sleep so good tonight as the temps stayed in the 60's and I was a bit warm in my sleeping bag. There's almost a full moon and I kind of regretted the light colored rain fly on my tent, but the real problem came in the middle of the night with the wind.
I was woken up by the sounds of a lot of wind. You could hear it rustling all the plant life and you'd hear it off in the distance as it approached, and then the tent would shake and then you'd listen to it trail off into the distance. I'd forgotten to check the overnight weather while I still had cell service so I was wondering if there was a storm coming in. I decided to pay the fee for a single weather update via my Garmin InReach Mini 2 to my cell phone. It was good to test it out in case I need it in the future and I was pretty pleased with the amount of information provided for the small fee. Definitely useful for these kinds of situations. As it turns out, the night will remain clear, but the wind it's saying doesn't match what I'm experiencing. I'm guessing the wind is being funneled through the canyons and intensifying it. I eventually fall asleep and stay asleep until my alarm at 6AM.
I get up at 6 and start packing up as the sky is lightening up. It's a slog back to the DFW area so I can be home in time for us to host a birthday party for my brother in law that afternoon.
I certainly hadn't been looking forward to a trip to the "Boring Texas Panhandle" for only three tour stops, but it sure did surprise me and was far more enjoyable than I'd imagined it could possibly be.
And now, I've taken care of the easy stops, I've taken care of the hard stops. Looks like a couple more weekends will be needed to get the medium ones. Hopefully I can get it done before the heat comes, otherwise I might be holding some off until autumn.
I've been trying to get weather, work, and home life aligned to make this trip work out and the first weekend of May looked mostly good. Nice weather was predicted for the weekend, but the storms during the week looked to persist through Friday and all the cities on my route were showing 99% chance of rain and cool temperatures all day Friday for my ride out. I decided to pull the trigger and do it anyway.
It did indeed rain most of the day Friday, however, as I was wrapping up work and getting ready to leave, we were having a dry spell at home. I suited up for cooler temps and rain and got on the road trying to also beat DFW traffic.
On my way out, I made a mistake and took the wrong ramp on the Texpress lanes and ended up taking 114 instead of 183. Normally this wouldn't be an issue as they'll both get me through. The downside to 114 is that it stops being a freeway at I-35W. As I was approaching this and noticing the traffic at the light, it seemed a bit heavier than normal. That's when I remember what's on the other side of I-35W and also remember what is going on this weekend. On the other side is Texas Motor Speedway and it's NASCAR weekend. Thankfully, it's mostly just the later arrivals of folks in their RV's as the racing doesn't seem to begin till Saturday. I make it through ok, still, it takes me 1.5 hours to fully cross the entire metroplex.
I keep checking the radar and the rain is definitely there but it's looking like my route is running just north of all of the rain so I'm happy with that.
So, it's not an adventure ride until something goes wrong, otherwise it's just a ride. Well, it looks like I'll be having a little adventure on my way out. About 3 hours from home I'm running good and then the bike loses power on me. I try to do a rolling restart but it's no good. This happened right at an exit so I pull in the clutch and coast off shifting down to neutral before I come to a stop on the side of the service road.
I turn the bike fully off, then back on and hit the starter and I get the dreaded "FuelPumpFailure" warning. I had this same warning that left me on the side of the road last year. Looks like this.
This is a known issue with these KTM pumps, which is why I spent the money on the "Good forever" pump from Quantum when I replaced it after the previous failure. New pump doesn't have but a couple of thousand miles on it so I'm definitely not happy to be sitting here dealing with it again. Additionally, I'd tried the lucky deal of "If you don't have a spare, you'll need one, but if you carry one, you'll never need it" by carrying a brand new spare Quantum fuel pump, but that didn't work out because here we are.
I have a little hissy fit of anger then start thinking of my options at this point.
1. I have a spare pump and a tool roll, change the pump here on the side of the road and continue my plans.
2. Change the pump and go home and put the bike up for sale since I can't depend on it.
3. Set the bike on fire right where it sits.
Fun as it would be, I dismiss option 3, which means now I need to get down to being a roadside mechanic. I'm familar with the process and it's supposed to be possible to pull the pump assembly without fully removing the tank. I can remove the tank but it's about 6000 fasteners to do so, versus just a couple to pull it as is. It looks like I'll still need to drop my belly pan as it's potentially in the way.
Plan in place, it's time to get started. I put the bike up on the center stand and start cutting off the fuel valves. I turn off the left one going for the left side of the tank and the pump. I walk around the bike to the valve on the right side that flows through the crossover hose and....waitaminute. Why is this side off?
Think think think. It is odd how long I've been running at 4 bars of fuel on the guage. The sensor for the guage is on the right side. If I drained the left side, it's out of fuel, hence no fuel pressure, hence the sensor sending to the computer there's no fuel pressure and the computer triggering a fuel pump failure error. Let's open both sides and see what happens. *Sounds of fuel whooshing/gurgling as the tanks equalize.*
I give it a mintue and then start the bike and thumb the starter and she fires to life. Low and behold, now, instead of 4 bars of fuel, I have 2. Lucky me, and I guess it's too sophisticated to ask KTM to put in a "IdiotConnectedToHandlebars" error code instead.
Alright, let's find a gas station! 5 miles away? Yes please!
Unfortunately my route is the same slog I always end up taking when heading west, so it's pretty boring most of the way, but at least there's my favorite burger place, JT's in Childress TX.
The usual bacon cheese burger and fries always hits the spot.
Also, I've heard the arguments on how to put bacon on a burger. There's those in the X camp and those in the side by side camp, but you are both wrong. This is how you bacon a burger!
After dinner, it's a nice run to Caprock Canyon, my campground for the weekend. True to what I saw on "Adventure Piggy's" youtube videos, the automatic gate isn't so automatic for motorcycles. Thankfully, over the weekend I never had to wait more than 5 minutes for someone to come along to trigger the gate for me. Tonight it's someone on their way out and I'm able to get in and find my campsite. Thanks to being far west, I am albe to arrive at sundown and have enough light to figure out how to pitch my brand new tent. I did preassemble it once in my living room but it's not the same as doing it for real.
New tent, and my new Flextail Mini Pump 3 lighting things up nicely.
30" wide mattress is a tight fit with all my gear, but it keeps me comfy at night so I don't complain.
Overnight temps got down into the 40's and I tell you, I had the best night's sleep I've ever had camping, or probably in the last month of regular sleeping. I slept soundly and when I woke up at 6 and my body asked for another hour, I granted it that wish. I dragged myself out of the tent fully refreshed and I have to say, this is not so much of a bad view to wake up to.
Time to go collect some tour stops. I stash my Jesse side bags in my tent, suit up and get on the road. My trip out of the park would not be so easy though. To get out, I have to take the road that goes down into the bottom of the canyon, and it's got a steep section with a right hand turn at the bottom to a bridge, which is obscured by a tree on the right side. As I'm coming down I spot a bison standing on the bridge. Caprock Canyon State Park is home to the State bison herd and one big guy is standing on the narrow bridge right in my way facing me.
I hit the brakes and am awkwardly stopped on the steep downhill holding the clutch and the brake. The bridge is narrow with guardrails on both sides. These animals are usually pretty doscile, but there's plenty of videos on youtube of tourists angering them and it not ending well. I don't really have a lot of room to go around and I'm afraid if I move forward, it might feel threatened all pinned in and decide to charge me and I don't have a lot of places to go at this point. I've also been told there's plenty of Mama bison with babies around, I don't see a baby, but still...
So, we have a bit of a standoff, me staring at the bison and the bison staring at me, while I wait for a bigger vehicle to come along and maybe I can sneak by with them. It takes about five minutes and a truck approaches from behind me. Thankfully, it's one of the park rangers. He see's the situation, pulls up next to me laughing and takes the lead. Faced with the truck driving right at him slowly, the bison turns around and ables across the bridge and the truck herds it off to the left leaving me space on the right to zoom by. I give the ranger a friendly wave and I'm headed for the gate. Less than five minutes for someone to be coming in and I'm out of the park.
My first stop of the day will be Turkey Texas, and it looks like Garmin has some "Adventurous Routing" for me. YES PLEASE!
Most of this dirt is really good and the riding is very nice. However, there's sections of soft sand that get the big KTM into a bit of a wiggle woggle here and there. Most not an issue but there's a few spots that cause some butt clenching situations.
In the above photo, off to the right, is the worst section I hit. I almost ate it twice there, on the gas leaning back but the front plowing and dropping the bars before catching and coming back upright. When the sand wasn't trying to get me, it was the deer. I had several deer run out of the brush in front of me, including one who made it to the safety of the left side of the road before changing it's mind and deciding the right side was safer while dodging my front tire. I had some fun and excitement for a bit but was happy to get back on the pavement a short distance from my destination.
Turkey, Texas, is the hometown of Western Swing legend Bob Wills of the band "Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys." The tour stop is a replica of his old tour bus.
Also on this corner is the well maintained first Phillips 66 gas station built in Texas.
Complete with it's own historical marker:
There's a bonus historical marker right next to it around the bankhead highway.
After that I gas up and head to my next tour stop. The roads there are two lanes between farm land and I spend periods of over 10 minutes riding not seeeing a single other vehicle. I do have a short 5 mile stretch on I-40 which was kind of unavoidable. Soon enough though, I arrive at "The Stuidio Coffee" in Wheeler Texas.
I've been on too big of a hurry to manage to spend any money at any of the locations on the tour so far, and I've missed operating hours at a few locations. Today, it's 10:30AM and I need breakfast and a coffee so I head inside. I'm curious if it's an actual coffee shop with all the stuff for sale on the sidewalk, but the lady inside assures me she can indeed get me a hot latte and apologizes for all the craziness of the city wide garage sale going on.
I've always said that people don't like Starbucks Coffee because the coffee is nasty, they just like toppings. This was sitting on the counter so it got a chuckle from me and I had to grab a photo.
No breakfast, but I grab the last chocolate chip cookie she's got, then head across the street to enjoy my breakfast on the square under a big shade tree.
Not a bad view in a cute little town.
Next up is a stop that isn't part of the tour, but one I've had on my maps for a long time. I put it on the maps since I come out this direction often, but it's far enough off the route that I haven't visited it yet, since it usually adds at least an hour to a trip that I'm just trying to get through to get to the "Good Stuff" in New Mexico and Colorado. Today, however, it's sitting almost right between my tour stops, so I'm routing there on a custom route that I picked out to find some more dirt.
I find me a little bit of worn two track running through the windmills. I'm riding wary, but there's no surprise sand like earlier, it's all just good riding.
I finally get to my point on the map that I've been looking to hit for years and finally I'm here!
Yea, not much to look at, but I enjoy visiting iconic movie locations and this is one of them. I do seem to have a theme going of visiting Tom Hanks locations and this is one of them. At the end of the movie "Cast Away" Tom stops here to contemplate his options when he meets the pretty red haired lady wh tells him where all the roads go.
There's a lot more windmills out there these days though.
Right before the intersection scene, Tom returns the package with the wings on it to the original sender. Lots of times with movies, things aren't geographically located correctly, but in this case they are, as the ranch is just five miles north of the intersection.
The sign has been redone from what is shown in the movie, but I like it and it's well done.
I ride a bunch of other dirt roads and make my way to my last tour stop of this trip, Antelope Leather in Borger Texas.
I like these city murals and since this one was right next door I pushed the bike over and got a picture with it.
On my route the day before I passed one of the big AI datacenters that is being built. We actually drove past it back in November and it was a mass of lights and tons of cranes, so we looked up what was being built. Today, I'm riding on dirt roads past huge cattle farms and cotton fields and I see something similar off in the distance. I see the huge structure and so many cranes, this has to be the same thing, so I reroute and go ride by the construction site.
This is pretty impressive being built here out in the middel of nowhere. The structure I see looks to be one of about 6 pads under various stages of construction, this thing will be huge.
I looked it up later and it's "Project Matador" being developed by Fermi America. The interesting thing is that most of these AI datacenters put a huge strain on the local power grid, so many are being built with this in mind. This one will generate it's own 17GW of energy using their own on site infrastructure of natural gas, solar, and even their own nuclear power plant apparently. That's quite the outlay of infrastructure. On the interesting side, this is a good way for folks to find tech jobs in the future but still live out in the country and not be forced into city life.
I'm keeing my food theme of getting Mexican food on my tour going, and I've got two Mexican restaurants in my GPS in Amarillo to stop at. Thanks to sleeping in and my general meandering, I'm going to miss out on the little mom and pop place that I really wanted to go to because they close at 3PM and I'd arrive just after closing. Instead I head to a well known locatioin in a section of town with a lot of different restaurants that is quite busy at this time of a Saturday afternoon. Braceros Mexican Grill is the location and I have to say, this is how every restaurant should bring you chips and salsa.
For my meal, I decide to try the Carne Guisada. It's basically a slow cooked stew of beef tips and potatoes with a mix of other vegetables. It differes from a normal beef stew in that it uses Mexican spices to give it a unique flavor and peppers cooked in add quite a bit of heat. It's pretty delicious and I end up dumping a bit of my rice in the leftover sauce to get all that flavor out of the bowl.
Homemade corn and flour tortillas top it off.
After lunch, Palo Duro Canyon State Park is on my way back to my campsite so I am routed there to ride through. Too bad I left my paperwork for my campsite in my tent because the lady at the gate is trying to find ways to comp my entrance into this park. I tell her that lesson learned, but I'll pay the eight bucks for the entry, I'm sure it's going to good use and will be worth it.
I parked at the visitors center and had a good chat with the ladies inside about the wildlife at both parks, got my magnet and then was on my way riding through the beautiful park.
There's even another historical marker there too.
After finishing up in the park, I ride about 10 more miles of dirt before getting on the slab for most of the rest of the way back. I stopped for a last gas stop in Tulia Texas, which appears to be the junk capital of the country, as it looks like everything unwanted just gets sent here. I called and left a message for my wife letting her know I was at my last stop as there's no cell service at the campsite.
The town just outside Caprock Canyon State Park is Quitaque which I'm told is pronounced "Kitty Cue" and they've got a mural for a photo opportunity too.
This sheep ranch on the way in has old bicycles all along the sections of fence.
A less than five minute wait to get in the gate and I'm riding these gorgeous roads through the park.
My only bison encounters are ones off the side of the road thankfully. Soon I'm back at my camp to heat up a freeze dried meal (Burn ban so no campfire) while chatting with some other folks and enjoying the setting sun in the canyon.
For security and ease of loading in the morning, I roll the bike back by my tent.
I also took some time to enjoy that the prickly pears are all in bloom.
I then made my way into my tent to spend some time reading my book before going to sleep. Today the weather had started off in the upper 40's and ended up in the lower 70's. I wouldn't sleep so good tonight as the temps stayed in the 60's and I was a bit warm in my sleeping bag. There's almost a full moon and I kind of regretted the light colored rain fly on my tent, but the real problem came in the middle of the night with the wind.
I was woken up by the sounds of a lot of wind. You could hear it rustling all the plant life and you'd hear it off in the distance as it approached, and then the tent would shake and then you'd listen to it trail off into the distance. I'd forgotten to check the overnight weather while I still had cell service so I was wondering if there was a storm coming in. I decided to pay the fee for a single weather update via my Garmin InReach Mini 2 to my cell phone. It was good to test it out in case I need it in the future and I was pretty pleased with the amount of information provided for the small fee. Definitely useful for these kinds of situations. As it turns out, the night will remain clear, but the wind it's saying doesn't match what I'm experiencing. I'm guessing the wind is being funneled through the canyons and intensifying it. I eventually fall asleep and stay asleep until my alarm at 6AM.
I get up at 6 and start packing up as the sky is lightening up. It's a slog back to the DFW area so I can be home in time for us to host a birthday party for my brother in law that afternoon.
I certainly hadn't been looking forward to a trip to the "Boring Texas Panhandle" for only three tour stops, but it sure did surprise me and was far more enjoyable than I'd imagined it could possibly be.
And now, I've taken care of the easy stops, I've taken care of the hard stops. Looks like a couple more weekends will be needed to get the medium ones. Hopefully I can get it done before the heat comes, otherwise I might be holding some off until autumn.
Great write up we feel it's like riding along with you, also entertaining that "someone" didn't turn the fuel onIt's time again for me to work on my 2026 Motorcycle Grand Tour of Texas. I've gottena all the local stuff, so most of what is left will require weekend trips. I've been eyeballing those up in the panhandle for a bit as I'd really like to make that ride before the full heat of Texas summer is upon us.
I've been trying to get weather, work, and home life aligned to make this trip work out and the first weekend of May looked mostly good. Nice weather was predicted for the weekend, but the storms during the week looked to persist through Friday and all the cities on my route were showing 99% chance of rain and cool temperatures all day Friday for my ride out. I decided to pull the trigger and do it anyway.
It did indeed rain most of the day Friday, however, as I was wrapping up work and getting ready to leave, we were having a dry spell at home. I suited up for cooler temps and rain and got on the road trying to also beat DFW traffic.
On my way out, I made a mistake and took the wrong ramp on the Texpress lanes and ended up taking 114 instead of 183. Normally this wouldn't be an issue as they'll both get me through. The downside to 114 is that it stops being a freeway at I-35W. As I was approaching this and noticing the traffic at the light, it seemed a bit heavier than normal. That's when I remember what's on the other side of I-35W and also remember what is going on this weekend. On the other side is Texas Motor Speedway and it's NASCAR weekend. Thankfully, it's mostly just the later arrivals of folks in their RV's as the racing doesn't seem to begin till Saturday. I make it through ok, still, it takes me 1.5 hours to fully cross the entire metroplex.
I keep checking the radar and the rain is definitely there but it's looking like my route is running just north of all of the rain so I'm happy with that.
So, it's not an adventure ride until something goes wrong, otherwise it's just a ride. Well, it looks like I'll be having a little adventure on my way out. About 3 hours from home I'm running good and then the bike loses power on me. I try to do a rolling restart but it's no good. This happened right at an exit so I pull in the clutch and coast off shifting down to neutral before I come to a stop on the side of the service road.
I turn the bike fully off, then back on and hit the starter and I get the dreaded "FuelPumpFailure" warning. I had this same warning that left me on the side of the road last year. Looks like this.
This is a known issue with these KTM pumps, which is why I spent the money on the "Good forever" pump from Quantum when I replaced it after the previous failure. New pump doesn't have but a couple of thousand miles on it so I'm definitely not happy to be sitting here dealing with it again. Additionally, I'd tried the lucky deal of "If you don't have a spare, you'll need one, but if you carry one, you'll never need it" by carrying a brand new spare Quantum fuel pump, but that didn't work out because here we are.
I have a little hissy fit of anger then start thinking of my options at this point.
1. I have a spare pump and a tool roll, change the pump here on the side of the road and continue my plans.
2. Change the pump and go home and put the bike up for sale since I can't depend on it.
3. Set the bike on fire right where it sits.
Fun as it would be, I dismiss option 3, which means now I need to get down to being a roadside mechanic. I'm familar with the process and it's supposed to be possible to pull the pump assembly without fully removing the tank. I can remove the tank but it's about 6000 fasteners to do so, versus just a couple to pull it as is. It looks like I'll still need to drop my belly pan as it's potentially in the way.
Plan in place, it's time to get started. I put the bike up on the center stand and start cutting off the fuel valves. I turn off the left one going for the left side of the tank and the pump. I walk around the bike to the valve on the right side that flows through the crossover hose and....waitaminute. Why is this side off?
Think think think. It is odd how long I've been running at 4 bars of fuel on the guage. The sensor for the guage is on the right side. If I drained the left side, it's out of fuel, hence no fuel pressure, hence the sensor sending to the computer there's no fuel pressure and the computer triggering a fuel pump failure error. Let's open both sides and see what happens. *Sounds of fuel whooshing/gurgling as the tanks equalize.*
I give it a mintue and then start the bike and thumb the starter and she fires to life. Low and behold, now, instead of 4 bars of fuel, I have 2. Lucky me, and I guess it's too sophisticated to ask KTM to put in a "IdiotConnectedToHandlebars" error code instead.
Alright, let's find a gas station! 5 miles away? Yes please!
Unfortunately my route is the same slog I always end up taking when heading west, so it's pretty boring most of the way, but at least there's my favorite burger place, JT's in Childress TX.
The usual bacon cheese burger and fries always hits the spot.
Also, I've heard the arguments on how to put bacon on a burger. There's those in the X camp and those in the side by side camp, but you are both wrong. This is how you bacon a burger!
After dinner, it's a nice run to Caprock Canyon, my campground for the weekend. True to what I saw on "Adventure Piggy's" youtube videos, the automatic gate isn't so automatic for motorcycles. Thankfully, over the weekend I never had to wait more than 5 minutes for someone to come along to trigger the gate for me. Tonight it's someone on their way out and I'm able to get in and find my campsite. Thanks to being far west, I am albe to arrive at sundown and have enough light to figure out how to pitch my brand new tent. I did preassemble it once in my living room but it's not the same as doing it for real.
New tent, and my new Flextail Mini Pump 3 lighting things up nicely.
30" wide mattress is a tight fit with all my gear, but it keeps me comfy at night so I don't complain.
Overnight temps got down into the 40's and I tell you, I had the best night's sleep I've ever had camping, or probably in the last month of regular sleeping. I slept soundly and when I woke up at 6 and my body asked for another hour, I granted it that wish. I dragged myself out of the tent fully refreshed and I have to say, this is not so much of a bad view to wake up to.
Time to go collect some tour stops. I stash my Jesse side bags in my tent, suit up and get on the road. My trip out of the park would not be so easy though. To get out, I have to take the road that goes down into the bottom of the canyon, and it's got a steep section with a right hand turn at the bottom to a bridge, which is obscured by a tree on the right side. As I'm coming down I spot a bison standing on the bridge. Caprock Canyon State Park is home to the State bison herd and one big guy is standing on the narrow bridge right in my way facing me.
I hit the brakes and am awkwardly stopped on the steep downhill holding the clutch and the brake. The bridge is narrow with guardrails on both sides. These animals are usually pretty doscile, but there's plenty of videos on youtube of tourists angering them and it not ending well. I don't really have a lot of room to go around and I'm afraid if I move forward, it might feel threatened all pinned in and decide to charge me and I don't have a lot of places to go at this point. I've also been told there's plenty of Mama bison with babies around, I don't see a baby, but still...
So, we have a bit of a standoff, me staring at the bison and the bison staring at me, while I wait for a bigger vehicle to come along and maybe I can sneak by with them. It takes about five minutes and a truck approaches from behind me. Thankfully, it's one of the park rangers. He see's the situation, pulls up next to me laughing and takes the lead. Faced with the truck driving right at him slowly, the bison turns around and ables across the bridge and the truck herds it off to the left leaving me space on the right to zoom by. I give the ranger a friendly wave and I'm headed for the gate. Less than five minutes for someone to be coming in and I'm out of the park.
My first stop of the day will be Turkey Texas, and it looks like Garmin has some "Adventurous Routing" for me. YES PLEASE!
Most of this dirt is really good and the riding is very nice. However, there's sections of soft sand that get the big KTM into a bit of a wiggle woggle here and there. Most not an issue but there's a few spots that cause some butt clenching situations.
In the above photo, off to the right, is the worst section I hit. I almost ate it twice there, on the gas leaning back but the front plowing and dropping the bars before catching and coming back upright. When the sand wasn't trying to get me, it was the deer. I had several deer run out of the brush in front of me, including one who made it to the safety of the left side of the road before changing it's mind and deciding the right side was safer while dodging my front tire. I had some fun and excitement for a bit but was happy to get back on the pavement a short distance from my destination.
Turkey, Texas, is the hometown of Western Swing legend Bob Wills of the band "Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys." The tour stop is a replica of his old tour bus.
Also on this corner is the well maintained first Phillips 66 gas station built in Texas.
Complete with it's own historical marker:
There's a bonus historical marker right next to it around the bankhead highway.
After that I gas up and head to my next tour stop. The roads there are two lanes between farm land and I spend periods of over 10 minutes riding not seeeing a single other vehicle. I do have a short 5 mile stretch on I-40 which was kind of unavoidable. Soon enough though, I arrive at "The Stuidio Coffee" in Wheeler Texas.
I've been on too big of a hurry to manage to spend any money at any of the locations on the tour so far, and I've missed operating hours at a few locations. Today, it's 10:30AM and I need breakfast and a coffee so I head inside. I'm curious if it's an actual coffee shop with all the stuff for sale on the sidewalk, but the lady inside assures me she can indeed get me a hot latte and apologizes for all the craziness of the city wide garage sale going on.
I've always said that people don't like Starbucks Coffee because the coffee is nasty, they just like toppings. This was sitting on the counter so it got a chuckle from me and I had to grab a photo.
No breakfast, but I grab the last chocolate chip cookie she's got, then head across the street to enjoy my breakfast on the square under a big shade tree.
Not a bad view in a cute little town.
Next up is a stop that isn't part of the tour, but one I've had on my maps for a long time. I put it on the maps since I come out this direction often, but it's far enough off the route that I haven't visited it yet, since it usually adds at least an hour to a trip that I'm just trying to get through to get to the "Good Stuff" in New Mexico and Colorado. Today, however, it's sitting almost right between my tour stops, so I'm routing there on a custom route that I picked out to find some more dirt.
I find me a little bit of worn two track running through the windmills. I'm riding wary, but there's no surprise sand like earlier, it's all just good riding.
I finally get to my point on the map that I've been looking to hit for years and finally I'm here!
Yea, not much to look at, but I enjoy visiting iconic movie locations and this is one of them. I do seem to have a theme going of visiting Tom Hanks locations and this is one of them. At the end of the movie "Cast Away" Tom stops here to contemplate his options when he meets the pretty red haired lady wh tells him where all the roads go.
There's a lot more windmills out there these days though.
Right before the intersection scene, Tom returns the package with the wings on it to the original sender. Lots of times with movies, things aren't geographically located correctly, but in this case they are, as the ranch is just five miles north of the intersection.
The sign has been redone from what is shown in the movie, but I like it and it's well done.
I ride a bunch of other dirt roads and make my way to my last tour stop of this trip, Antelope Leather in Borger Texas.
I like these city murals and since this one was right next door I pushed the bike over and got a picture with it.
On my route the day before I passed one of the big AI datacenters that is being built. We actually drove past it back in November and it was a mass of lights and tons of cranes, so we looked up what was being built. Today, I'm riding on dirt roads past huge cattle farms and cotton fields and I see something similar off in the distance. I see the huge structure and so many cranes, this has to be the same thing, so I reroute and go ride by the construction site.
This is pretty impressive being built here out in the middel of nowhere. The structure I see looks to be one of about 6 pads under various stages of construction, this thing will be huge.
I looked it up later and it's "Project Matador" being developed by Fermi America. The interesting thing is that most of these AI datacenters put a huge strain on the local power grid, so many are being built with this in mind. This one will generate it's own 17GW of energy using their own on site infrastructure of natural gas, solar, and even their own nuclear power plant apparently. That's quite the outlay of infrastructure. On the interesting side, this is a good way for folks to find tech jobs in the future but still live out in the country and not be forced into city life.
I'm keeing my food theme of getting Mexican food on my tour going, and I've got two Mexican restaurants in my GPS in Amarillo to stop at. Thanks to sleeping in and my general meandering, I'm going to miss out on the little mom and pop place that I really wanted to go to because they close at 3PM and I'd arrive just after closing. Instead I head to a well known locatioin in a section of town with a lot of different restaurants that is quite busy at this time of a Saturday afternoon. Braceros Mexican Grill is the location and I have to say, this is how every restaurant should bring you chips and salsa.
For my meal, I decide to try the Carne Guisada. It's basically a slow cooked stew of beef tips and potatoes with a mix of other vegetables. It differes from a normal beef stew in that it uses Mexican spices to give it a unique flavor and peppers cooked in add quite a bit of heat. It's pretty delicious and I end up dumping a bit of my rice in the leftover sauce to get all that flavor out of the bowl.
Homemade corn and flour tortillas top it off.
After lunch, Palo Duro Canyon State Park is on my way back to my campsite so I am routed there to ride through. Too bad I left my paperwork for my campsite in my tent because the lady at the gate is trying to find ways to comp my entrance into this park. I tell her that lesson learned, but I'll pay the eight bucks for the entry, I'm sure it's going to good use and will be worth it.
I parked at the visitors center and had a good chat with the ladies inside about the wildlife at both parks, got my magnet and then was on my way riding through the beautiful park.
There's even another historical marker there too.
After finishing up in the park, I ride about 10 more miles of dirt before getting on the slab for most of the rest of the way back. I stopped for a last gas stop in Tulia Texas, which appears to be the junk capital of the country, as it looks like everything unwanted just gets sent here. I called and left a message for my wife letting her know I was at my last stop as there's no cell service at the campsite.
The town just outside Caprock Canyon State Park is Quitaque which I'm told is pronounced "Kitty Cue" and they've got a mural for a photo opportunity too.
This sheep ranch on the way in has old bicycles all along the sections of fence.
A less than five minute wait to get in the gate and I'm riding these gorgeous roads through the park.
My only bison encounters are ones off the side of the road thankfully. Soon I'm back at my camp to heat up a freeze dried meal (Burn ban so no campfire) while chatting with some other folks and enjoying the setting sun in the canyon.
For security and ease of loading in the morning, I roll the bike back by my tent.
I also took some time to enjoy that the prickly pears are all in bloom.
I then made my way into my tent to spend some time reading my book before going to sleep. Today the weather had started off in the upper 40's and ended up in the lower 70's. I wouldn't sleep so good tonight as the temps stayed in the 60's and I was a bit warm in my sleeping bag. There's almost a full moon and I kind of regretted the light colored rain fly on my tent, but the real problem came in the middle of the night with the wind.
I was woken up by the sounds of a lot of wind. You could hear it rustling all the plant life and you'd hear it off in the distance as it approached, and then the tent would shake and then you'd listen to it trail off into the distance. I'd forgotten to check the overnight weather while I still had cell service so I was wondering if there was a storm coming in. I decided to pay the fee for a single weather update via my Garmin InReach Mini 2 to my cell phone. It was good to test it out in case I need it in the future and I was pretty pleased with the amount of information provided for the small fee. Definitely useful for these kinds of situations. As it turns out, the night will remain clear, but the wind it's saying doesn't match what I'm experiencing. I'm guessing the wind is being funneled through the canyons and intensifying it. I eventually fall asleep and stay asleep until my alarm at 6AM.
I get up at 6 and start packing up as the sky is lightening up. It's a slog back to the DFW area so I can be home in time for us to host a birthday party for my brother in law that afternoon.
I certainly hadn't been looking forward to a trip to the "Boring Texas Panhandle" for only three tour stops, but it sure did surprise me and was far more enjoyable than I'd imagined it could possibly be.
And now, I've taken care of the easy stops, I've taken care of the hard stops. Looks like a couple more weekends will be needed to get the medium ones. Hopefully I can get it done before the heat comes, otherwise I might be holding some off until autumn.
... Of course option 3 is always on the table...
Jeff S
Forum Supporter
Great writeup, indeed. Thanks for taking the effort. And I LOVE those parks up there. I had a bison-jam one morning trying to get on the road... up by the main HQ, it seems like every bison in the park gathered and were just hanging out. At times, there were dozens just standing on or near road:
I was there close to 30 min before two cars departing the park came thru. I nuzzled in between the cars, and passed within a few feet of these guys. It's a lovely place to ride, camp and hike!
I was there close to 30 min before two cars departing the park came thru. I nuzzled in between the cars, and passed within a few feet of these guys. It's a lovely place to ride, camp and hike!
Those bison jams are interesting. I had this one coming out of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I was able to nose my way through, and they just moved out of the way. This one on the bridge this weekend was in full standoff mode and not going anywhere for me.
jgrm1
0
The girlfriend and I just were just in Turkey for the Bob Wills Days music festival April 24-26. It was a great time to be there.
-Jeff
-Jeff
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