BackRoads: The Great Ride Around Texas

Day 1. Houston to Center. Finally. The moment of departure had arrived. Weeks of planning, selecting the itinerary, inviting guests, even one cancelled trip due to health problems.

May 13th, 8:00 a.m. exactly and we give the signal to “head ‘em up, move ‘em out!”. (Okay, maybe you are not old enough to have watched the old wagon train series with a much younger Clint Eastwood as “Rowdy Yates”.) Our initial ride had a total of 9 bikes, although 3 would be riding with us for this 1st. day only.

We had decided to take a counter-clockwise path around Texas to save the Big Bend and Davis Mountain loop riding for nearer the end of the trip.

The route this first day would take us slightly southwest in order to pick up the Blue water Highway from Angleton to Galveston. The first scheduled stop was in Angleton to visit Goe Harley-Davidson, make sure everything was okay and give the die hard Harley riders a chance to pick up a souvenir T-shirt from one more Harley store. Howard Goe was his customary gracious self and welcomed the group with a pot of fresh coffee.

Another half hour beyond Goe’s and we topped the bridge leading into to Surfside and were greeting by a stunning view of the Gulf of Mexico. From here we had about a 35-mile ride along the Blue water Highway enjoying almost a constant view of the ocean off to our right.

At Galveston we made a brief stop for photos along the seawall and then rode over to the ferry landing to load up for a free ferry ride across the Houston Ship Channel to Bolivar Peninsula. To our left as we drove onto Bolivar was the 117’ lighthouse built in 1872 and manned until 1937. Another 25 miles along the coast and then time to make a turn to the north and head up through East Texas. Cowboy HD in Beaumont was a “must stop” for some of the group before having a good seafood dinner at Baytown Seafood. The after lunch run from Beaumont to Center was an afternoon of non-eventful riding through the pine forests of the area. After a morning of ocean view riding we were now treated to roads that seemed to slice canyon-like through the tall pines, bayous, swamps, creeks and lakes. Beyond the Big Thicket National Preserve we followed a route that took us between the . A little further to the East was the giant Toledo Bend Reservoir – truly a fisherman’s paradise the giant lakes of the Sam Rayburn Reservoir and the Toledo Bend Reservoir – truly a fishermen’s paradise in this area. By the time we arrived at the Best Western in Center we had done about 360 miles and were looking forward to cooling off beside the pool.

Day 2. Center to Gainesville The 2nd. Day of a trip is always interesting because then you see who can...

We hope that you enjoyed reading this excerpt from "The Great Ride Around Texas". If you would like to read the entire article and more, you can order a back issue of Sep / Oct 2005 where this article was originally published.

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