At 9am on Wednesday, December 30th I rolled out of my driveway on my Trek Valencia and embarked on my second bicycle tour.  My destination, Wimberley, TX, was about 50 miles northeast of my home.

I planned the route using Garmin’s Mapsource program on my PC and downloaded the route to my Garmin Edge 705 so I’d have the benefit of turn-by-turn directions.  This arrangement worked flawlessly.  I also successfully implemented several lessons learned from my first tour.

Like my first tour, I came away from the experience with several key “lessons learned” including:

• Need to know elevation profile : A lesson learned from my first tour was to reduce the first day’s mileage so I’d have some energy left to explore my destination once I got there.  The route to Wimberley was about 15 miles shorter than my ride to Fredericksburg.  Unfortunately, a good portion of my ride to/from Wimberley involved climbing some big hills and a few monster hills.  One hill about 30 miles into the trip was so steep and long that I spent most of the climb in Zone 5 and even hit Zone 6 on my heart rate monitor.  As a result I found myself, once again, pretty spent by the time I arrived at my destination.
• Make it a three day tour :  While reducing mileage is one strategy, another would simply be to stay two nights at my destination.  A day of travel, a rest day to explore and a return ride home.
• Plan tours with more notice : I got to share the ride home with my brother-in-law and nephew.  Sharing the experience with others is a lot of fun.  I need to provide friends and family with several weeks notice to increase the chance they can accompany me.

Several things worked really well on this tour including:

• Planning the route through towns where I had lunch options, could refill my water bottle, buy drinks/snacks, etc.
• Most of the roads were bicycle friendly – road like Smithson Valley and Bulverde Road had light traffic while busier roads like Hwy 3159 and Hwy 306 had large, wide shoulders.
• The Mountain View Lodge where I stayed was incredible – a great value for the price and literally a room with a gorgeous view.  The establishment was also bicycle friendly as they allowed me to keep the bike in the room with me and even offered at not additional charge a nearby, vacant room as a place to keep our bikes if we wanted more room.

The experience of this trip proved, once again, that bicycle touring is a ton of fun.  It amazes me that you can travel so far on a bicycle.

Here’s a photo gallery of images from the tour providing a brief glimpse at my latest cycling adventure.