Bike Geek

On Saturday morning, I left my parent’s house in Hollywood Park for an 80-mile roundtrip bicycle tour from north central San Antonio to Castroville, Texas.  I was joined by Kim, a coworker and friend who wanted to experience her first bicycle tour and having another rider with me was a welcome change from my previous two solo tours.  I’m very proud of her accomplishment!  Bravo!

Our little mini-bicycle tour to Castroville was, in a word, incredible.

Here are just a few of the highlights that made it so:

Scenery : We encountered fields of beautiful wildflowers along Loop 1604 and FM 471.  We also saw some really neat rural scenes like vast rows of freshly planted crops that were perfectly lined up for as far as the eye could see.  View a gallery of images from the tour.

Destination : While I’ve been to Castroville in the past, I’d never experienced Castroville.  The bicycle tour gave us that opportunity and I really liked what I found – from the amazing Landmark Inn where we stayed overnight to the down-home cooking of Cora’s 471 Grille, we found there was much to do in this small town of 3,000 residents.

The ride : The route worked well and was challenging at times due to a brisk northwest wind that badgered us on certain segments.  Traffic was minimal on most of the ride and we enjoyed generally good road sharing by the motorists we encountered.

We arrived in Castroville on Saturday about 2pm and checked-in to the historic Landmark Inn.  From the moment we arrived we were greeted by the hospitality of Libby and other staff members.  They made us feel very welcome.  When I walked into my room for the first time I quickly learned that pictures did no justice to the charm of the “Castro Suite” that I had reserved.  The grounds at the lodge were picturesque and just a short walk from my room was the scenic Medina River and a waterfall guarded by huge bald cypress trees.

Typical for my bicycle adventures, it wasn’t long before most of my family descended upon me eager to use the excuse of my bike tour as a reason to come “check out someplace new”.  We ate some incredible nachos and enchilidas at Cora’s 471 Grille and I slept like a rock when we returned to the Landmark Inn.

We fought headwinds on our return trip home but once again enjoyed the sights and sounds of travel that only a bicycle can truly deliver.

This was my third bicycle mini-tour and once again my Trek Valencia proved it is a bicycle ready to tackle just about anything I throw at it.  I used this tour to put some new panniers to the test – a pair of Avenir Excursion bags and they proved up to the task.  Look for a review on these bags soon once I get some more mileage on them.

All-in-all, an outstanding experience that I look forward to introducing to other riders in the future!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 2:11 AM and is filed under bicycle touring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.