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My wife and I are considering purchasing some property as an investment or a way to park some money for a few years, and I halfway want to actually build on it and move if I can find the right place. With that in mind, my last ride was exploratory for an area I am considering: Lago Vista.
I am always surprised by Lago Vista. My brother used to have a house there and the roads in the little neighborhood where his house was are literally not passable without 4wd. It's like they paved them in the 1970s and then forgot they existed for the past half century. But right on the other side of Lohman Ford are finely groomed roads, golf courses, and multi-million dollar houses. Crazy.
With this in mind, I set out for this exploration on my old ADV-converted GS500E. I have tons of off road riding experience on a mountain bike, like hundreds of thousands of miles. But very little on a motorcycle. This is part of my plan to slowly get my toes in the water of dirt/gravel/off-road riding with the wrong equipment but stuff I happen to own and not worry about denting or scraping.
My dad joined me with his TU250X "Scrambler" conversion, which really is just a TUX with a teeny alloy front fender, a dirt bike style handlebar and Shinko 244s. We were mostly poking around the area just to the south and east of the Lago Vista airport:
On the map, these look a whole lot like roads. On the ground, they look a whole lot like a disaster area to ride any motorcycle on. You can't see it in the satellite image, but this spot is intensely hilly. There is a ridge along the Bar K Ranch Rd. that overlooks the lake and the area to the east is canyon-like. The roads are broken up, huge spots with all of the asphalt missing, rutted road base, loose gravel, trees lying in the road, you name it. It's like roads in the back woods of Belize or Jamaica.
I started out being a little apprehensive riding on this steep and rough surface, since I hadn't really had the GS off of solid pavement besides the occasional graded gravel driveway. Once I got the hang of standing on the pegs a bit and letting the bike kind of move around like it wanted to under me as I went over the rough stuff, it felt fine. Like riding a 400 lb mountain bike. The sketchiest part was descending these crazy steep hills covered in loose gravel and ruts and huge missing chunks of asphalt. I was always worried that the front tire would lock up or wash out, but the Shinko E705s hung on just fine. After riding up and down these roads and kind of passively looking at the properties that are for sale there, I started to gain a lot of confidence with the bike on these roads. It was fun and I wouldn't mind going back many more times and literally exploring every road in Lago. A couple of these roads, though, looked too steep and too loose to trust to my skills on this bike. I really wanted my Jeep for those. Hard to beat solid axles, 4wd, good tires and a winch just in case things go really south.
There is literally nothing developed out there. Not a single house, no power lines, no fire hydrants, probably no city water service. You go about two blocks and you'd swear you are 100 miles from civilization. It's just that bizarre.
For the ride out there from my parents' house in Leander, we rode all the way out Nameless Rd. to 1431. My GS500 feels like it was made for Nameless Rd. Coming home was 1431 all the way to Cedar Park. I prefer my Triumph for that road, but the whole way home I was so tempted to take off on every side road and run out of pavement. Whole different character, that Suzuki.
Next up I plan to ride the GS500 all the way out to my parents' place out by Castell. There are many miles of gravel county roads there, but it's nearly two hours of pavement to get there each way including a big section on either 29 or 71 with 65+mph speed limits. The GS500 is made for this route. In fact, it's exactly what I had in mind when I built it. I hope to find plenty of space to practice gravel road riding and probably even a touch of sand here and there plus numerous creek crossings out there. I need to block off a whole day to go explore there.
That's it for now!
I am always surprised by Lago Vista. My brother used to have a house there and the roads in the little neighborhood where his house was are literally not passable without 4wd. It's like they paved them in the 1970s and then forgot they existed for the past half century. But right on the other side of Lohman Ford are finely groomed roads, golf courses, and multi-million dollar houses. Crazy.
With this in mind, I set out for this exploration on my old ADV-converted GS500E. I have tons of off road riding experience on a mountain bike, like hundreds of thousands of miles. But very little on a motorcycle. This is part of my plan to slowly get my toes in the water of dirt/gravel/off-road riding with the wrong equipment but stuff I happen to own and not worry about denting or scraping.
My dad joined me with his TU250X "Scrambler" conversion, which really is just a TUX with a teeny alloy front fender, a dirt bike style handlebar and Shinko 244s. We were mostly poking around the area just to the south and east of the Lago Vista airport:
On the map, these look a whole lot like roads. On the ground, they look a whole lot like a disaster area to ride any motorcycle on. You can't see it in the satellite image, but this spot is intensely hilly. There is a ridge along the Bar K Ranch Rd. that overlooks the lake and the area to the east is canyon-like. The roads are broken up, huge spots with all of the asphalt missing, rutted road base, loose gravel, trees lying in the road, you name it. It's like roads in the back woods of Belize or Jamaica.
I started out being a little apprehensive riding on this steep and rough surface, since I hadn't really had the GS off of solid pavement besides the occasional graded gravel driveway. Once I got the hang of standing on the pegs a bit and letting the bike kind of move around like it wanted to under me as I went over the rough stuff, it felt fine. Like riding a 400 lb mountain bike. The sketchiest part was descending these crazy steep hills covered in loose gravel and ruts and huge missing chunks of asphalt. I was always worried that the front tire would lock up or wash out, but the Shinko E705s hung on just fine. After riding up and down these roads and kind of passively looking at the properties that are for sale there, I started to gain a lot of confidence with the bike on these roads. It was fun and I wouldn't mind going back many more times and literally exploring every road in Lago. A couple of these roads, though, looked too steep and too loose to trust to my skills on this bike. I really wanted my Jeep for those. Hard to beat solid axles, 4wd, good tires and a winch just in case things go really south.
There is literally nothing developed out there. Not a single house, no power lines, no fire hydrants, probably no city water service. You go about two blocks and you'd swear you are 100 miles from civilization. It's just that bizarre.
For the ride out there from my parents' house in Leander, we rode all the way out Nameless Rd. to 1431. My GS500 feels like it was made for Nameless Rd. Coming home was 1431 all the way to Cedar Park. I prefer my Triumph for that road, but the whole way home I was so tempted to take off on every side road and run out of pavement. Whole different character, that Suzuki.
Next up I plan to ride the GS500 all the way out to my parents' place out by Castell. There are many miles of gravel county roads there, but it's nearly two hours of pavement to get there each way including a big section on either 29 or 71 with 65+mph speed limits. The GS500 is made for this route. In fact, it's exactly what I had in mind when I built it. I hope to find plenty of space to practice gravel road riding and probably even a touch of sand here and there plus numerous creek crossings out there. I need to block off a whole day to go explore there.
That's it for now!