Ardentbold: Life Is What Happens When You're Making Other Plans: Handwritten Log from Another Hill Country Trip

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Life Is What Happens When You're Making Other Plans: Handwritten Log from Another Hill Country Trip

7/8/2025

This is definitely a far different format from anything I've done previously, but I find it much easier to distill my thoughts in the moment, pen on paper, rather than typing loudly on a laptop surrounded by nature or waiting to write until I come home days later. I'll eventually scan pages rather than photograph them, but nothing is perfect, and I'm trying to get my thoughts out, not sit on them for ages. Thanks for reading despite the messiness. This is all relatively unedited.

Also, for the record, this trip had been changed several times. It had originally started as ten states in eleven days on my 2012 Triumph Tiger 800XC, but I have it in many pieces, couldn't or wouldn't get it back together in time, and along with other woeful financial tales of us versus big greed and a limitation on my resources, which is a whole other blog, the trip was shortened from eleven days to four, and from a few thousand miles to a few hundred. Even then, fate changed it further.

My 1999 BMW R1100R, all ready for a three day camping trip.

Corn fields just north of Castroville on FM 471

Medina Dam from the South on 271, "Old Medina Dam Rd." Rough pavement, but beautiful views of rock outcrops and the woods all around. These are the first real hills as you follow this route.

Where my bike died.

This park near downtown Kerrville is currently under water after devastating floods during the July 4th weekend, 2025.

Buck Lake, South Llano River State Park

Panorama!

The River Trail

A rabbit chilling in the early morning before most of the campsites have stirred.

Texas Spotted Whiptail lizards lived under the slab under the picnic table of my campsite at Inks Lake State Park. I'm sure they kept the place clear of many insects for me.