We woke to a beautiful morning and filled our tummies with lots of goodies again from the breakfast bar . . . probably won’t be eating like this for the next week or so!!

It was Sunday morning and a local car club was having a meeting at the hotel. Some great old cars. I had a ‘Bug’ as my first car, way back in 1971. No problems with rusting running boards down here from road salt!!

Megan and Russ had the coolers full and several days worth of food on board and it was time to go . . .

. . . we stopped at the ‘Crazy Cat Cyclery’ to pick up  Nancy, Rachel and Jo-Anns’ bikes that had been shipped to, and reassembled, at  the local shop

A three hour drive landed us in Ft Davis and the Stone Village Tourist Camp. Our ‘interesting’ overnight accommodations.

Megan used some magic formula to determine rooming assignments and the G and I ended up in the same ‘room’.

The ‘tourist camp’ had been sort of a traditional motel with a car port in between each unit. The traditional rooms were quite roomy and had their own bathrooms. This is the room George and Russ shared . . .

. . . somewhere along the way, one of the prior owners figured out a way to double their profit margin by turning the carports into ‘rooms’.  Here was the unit the G and I shared . . .

. . . a screen wall across the front, with a privacy curtain, cement floor and a ‘community bathroom’ down the hall. Unique!!! The beds did have flannel comforters and sleeping was wonderful as the evening temps cooled, once the sun set . . . cozy. Soon it was time for a group dinner at a local ‘Mexican buffet’ followed by our first map meeting.

Each night after dinner we would have a map meeting, where Russ and Megan would alternate taking the lead, in explaining our activities for the next day. This is a common activity on all ACA (Adventure Cycling Association) trips including the three cross country trips I have done. At those 90 evening meetings, the essence for me of the following day was condense down to three facts:  1) where are we sleeping tonight? 2) who is cooking tonight? 3) when is the next rest day? Everything you needed to know!!!

Tonight we would have a treat. After the meeting we all vanned up to the McDonald Observatory run by the University of Texas. It houses the 10th  longest tubular telescope in the world. There were two programs tonight; an indoor lecture, and an outdoor twilight ‘Star Party’

We took in the lecture presented by Kelly, who was very entertaining and presented a great lecture regard the constellations using a young boy in a spacesuit as his ‘prop’ to help explain the cosmos!

We did not stay for the Star Party because of our need for an early departure the next day . . .

. . . but as we left the observatory, Venus was just showing up for the night!!