First town I rolled through - before it really opened up. This is Navasota, Texas. The main street, downtown still holds all the
appeal from former days even though more modern shops and services have sprung up on side streets. Downtown is usually
full during operating hours
The bike is a lot of fun to ride. It has a lot of ‘digging in’ type torque in all the gears and is smooth to ride at
higher speeds.
That’s something I did not expect from a bike this light on knobby tires. I did detect a wheel wobble around 65-75 mph that
I will need to get checked.
But for my purposes (all back roads), the bike was great. This ‘dirt/dual sport’ bike is tall.
Taller than my RR, so I was not quite ready to take it down single track trails yet. Instead, I was in search of illusive dirt and gravel roads.
The best dirt road I found was Wolf_______ Rd. When I saw the dirt road, I looked to see if there was a street sign, which would indicate that it was not a private drive. Sure enough: Wolf_____. I couldn’t read the second half as I made my turn. It didn’t matter to me. Anything with the name “Wolf†in it had to be the best place to be. That’s how I felt anyway since I’ve always been enamored with the Wolf.
It was a long dry dirt and gravel road running along the borders of farm land, through tree tunnels, across low water crossings, and eventually out to Railroad tracks. At that corner, there was the remains of an old town. I don’t know what town it use to be. And I don’t know what the old town was like, but the remains were great for photos. So I stopped and took photos there for a while.
Heading down Wolf___ Rd.
The scenery around Lake Somerville offers a nice respite from the cement city I live in. Even though the temperature was still in the 90’s, autumn is on it’s way and the farmers sense and know it. Many of the fields were already cut and baled. Large round hay bales dotted the horizon like push pins holding down terra firma. All along my route nature was beginning to don the sepia colors of autumn. I could see it in the hues of the trees and fields. Even buildings and the roads had picked up those subtle tones and were reflecting what nature had already begun.
I had pulled off the road just across from the red barn pictured above. I saw an old white church that I wanted to photograph. It wasn’t until I turned my back and walked away from the church, that I saw the wonderful Rockwell type scene taking place behind me. Symbolic? Maybe. The scene caused me to stop and reflect on my own 'search'. It seems that often people go looking for meaning or something spiritual in all the seemingly right places, but in fact, what they are looking for can often be found in the common, ordinary things of life - the beauty around us. Religion doesn’t hold a monopoly on that! It's perspective, I guess. Anyway, the photo cannot portray the scene adequately. It was beautiful.
Nevertheless, the church along Texas Scenic highway 390 does have some historical foundations, and it had an interesting cemetery surrounding it, so I took some photos before discovering the ‘worship’ going on behind me. The cemetery is different in that it is laid out in different sections. Almost as if it is divided generationally. Some very old graves are to the east of the church, while more recent graves are across from the entrance of the church, on the south side. And still another grouping fenced between the two, and another more recent area to the west of the church.
Notice the reference to the 1900 storm? The only historical storm in 1900 that I know of is the great Galveston flood of that year. I wonder if it is the same storm. If so, that means the winds from the storm reached inland this far north - maybe 120-140 miles.
I eventually did make it toward Lake Somerville just to check out the activity on the lake. At these high temperatures, people were still skiing, fishing, and swimming in late September. After that I headed home - but first a quick trip down a 25’ embankment to a trail running along a creek feeding Lake Somerville and then a stop by Independence before my non-stop ride in the late afternoon back to home.
The creek trail. I didn't go too far down this trail because it was getting late and I was alone. Climbing back up the steep 25 foot embankment onto a major road was a lot of fun and made me think I might just be ready to tackle some of those single track trails in the forest next time out.
And lastly - a stop in Independence, TX before my quick run home.
The DR doesn't have a low fuel gauge and I was unsure how many mpg to expect. I ran out of gas 10 miles from home, but I remembered about being able to switch to a reserve tank from my teenage days on a little Kawasaki dirt bike. So I switched over to the reserve tank, started it up while it was still rolling, and made it home safely.
A few more photos and a map of the area can be found here
