Day 50, 51, & 52

Some of you may be wondering this week why you see a camera crew following us in pictures. Well, here’s the deal….about a month ago we were contacted by some Seniors from Notre Dame who are studying film. They are currently taking a documentary class and asked to do a short documentary about this ride. On Sunday they joined us in San Antonio and will be with us filming until Thursday. We can’t wait to see the final product!

On Monday (Day 50) we were finally able to get the loveFAR bus into the shop to get the shifter fixed!!  It had been acting weird for some time now, but getting the part was hard because the bus is so old! We were not able to stay on the bus while it was being fixed, so we decided to go on a little educational fieldtrip in San Antonio. We left the bus garage via city bus around 10am. On the bus there was a seat dedicated to the memory of Rosa Parks. We had an impromptu history lesson explaining to the little boys who Rosa Parks was and why this seat was dedicated to her. It was a GREAT lesson!! We got off the bus at the San Antonio Zoo. We had coupons so we had a quick lesson in budgeting and financial awareness too. The Zoo was pretty great! It seemed like there were way more monkeys here than at our NC Zoo at home, but the enclosures were smaller so that was sad. We stood for the longest time and watched one baby monkey play with it's mom and then watched another set of monkeys who were rough housing and literally doing what looked like boxing. It was funny, however, at the end of the day, the Hippos were everyone's all around favorite!

Monday night after the bus was completed we drove back up to Fredericksburg and parked on the street beside of Hill Country Bike Works so we'd be ready to pedal on Tuesday morning from the same spot we left off last Thursday night.

Tuesday (Day 51) morning CJ was raring to ride!! The guys left the Hill Country Bike Works before the store even opened. The hills on this ride were really gorgeous. Now we finally understand why they call it the “Texas Hill Country”. They rode into Wimberley around 4pm. The place where we had planed to stay had low hanging limbs so we could not cross under. We had to find a place quickly so CJ and Craig rode over to the Town Hall and happened upon the city manager. He told us right where to park! It was a PERFECT parking lot with deer EVERYWHERE!! Some of them came withing 20 feet of our bus!

Through some other cyclists in NC, We knew of a cycling nonprofit in Wimberley called "Williams Racing Academy". We had called ahead to tell them we'd be in town. The organizers, Christian and Chloe Williams and their kids, were awesome hosts to us and even let us come over with EVERYONE to their house for dinner!!! Chloe prepared and served a WONDERFUL meal and the guys all got to small talk bicycle stuff most of the night. Before we left Christian gave CJ several goodies including a Williams Racing Academy Cycling Kit and a GARMIN SHARP feed zone bag!! We are so thankful to the Williams and their kids!

Wednesday (Day 52) after an amazing sunrise, CJ and Craig pedaled from Wimberley through San Marcos, past Lockhart, TX. While in the town of Lockhart Katie, Kenadi and "the littles" stopped and did some laundry then we met CJ and Craig over at Kreuz Market. This place is famous for their slow roasted TENDER meat!!! The Brisket, Ribs, Sausages.....well everything that we tried, were SOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD. For you Winston-Salem Folks....it was even BETTER than Bibs Downtown! The food came out on Butcher Paper...NO plates! And you were given no forks!! Believe me that did not stop us from chowing down!! On top of the AWESOME food, the folks there were also GREAT! They were so encouraging and the owners also donated all 9 of our meals!

We stopped for the night outside of Lockhart in a TINY town called DALE. We will pick up pedaling from there in the morning! Tonight we are at an RV park just outside of town called Lake Fallin' Star. It's super nice and we are VARY thankful to the owner, Kelly, for donating our spot for the night!!