Day 178: Oak Thicket Campground, Lake Fayette, TX

It was 90 degrees at 11 pm last night, and was near 80 this morning when we left to rejoin our route.  The humidity remained high, with fog in the river valleys this morning.  It was going to be yet another hot, humid day.

More sweat, with a side order of gnats...

We did make more of an effort to take some pictures, realizing that we haven't been doing much of that lately.  Partly that is because we have been traveling though nice areas, but nothing really catches our eye.  And a big factore is that the heat has us focused on cranking out the miles in a hurry, before things really start to heat up.

The self-proclaimed world's smallest Catholic church, near Round Top, TX.

A good chunk of our day was spent on Texas Farm Road 327, which is lined with "antique" stores (some antiques and a lot of pseudo-antiques).  For miles there are old barns, pole buildings and giant white vinyl tents crammed with stuff.  And, amazingly, there were a lot of people out shopping today.  I'm glad the heat was here to keep at least some folks at home, or it would have been a very unpleasant ride...

A store selling huge "antique" gasoline signs.

I rode 55 miles through mostly moderate hills, exclusively on (often rough) chip sealed roads, a part of which were on fairly busy roads with only intermittent shoulders.  And I managed to finish the day with a rear flat tire (caused by a piece of glass).

Both of our rear bike tires are starting to wear down, but we'll see if we can't get a few hundred more miles out of them before replacing them.  That should give us tires that will be adequate enough to make it to the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula (the front tires don't wear nearly as quickly as the rear ones do, so they are in better shape).  We'll be sure to restock our two spare bike tires before heading south of the border in November.

We are camped at Oak Thicket Campground on Lake Fayette ($32, power, water, adjustable showers).  [The camping fee is only $22, but we also had to pay $5 each per day to enter the park.]  We like it here, as the oak thicket provides plenty of shade.  So despite it being as hot as it was yesterday, we don't feel the heat quite as much.

Our campsite in the oak thicket.

It looks as though we are finally leaving gator territory.  We are currently crossing through areas where gators are found infrequently and are very dispersed.  So we let Lana play in the (hot!) water, something she has sorely missed these past few weeks since we were in Jackson, MS.  

Four buzzards keep an eye on Lana as she plays in Lake Fayette.