Day 13 - Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig - 533 Miles

States visited on this trip.







Rolled out of bed before the sun this morning and was on the road by 6:30 a.m. Why? I don't know. It was New Year's Eve and seemed like a good idea at the time?

Wanted some new road real bad, and I especially didn't want to go through that maze and madness called DFW. So...I decided to turn south and collect a few more county courthouses.

Turned south on US183 in Vernon.




















(Wilbarger County Courthouse - Vernon, TX)







Moved down US183 through the county seat of Seymour in Baylor County. No picture here. The courthouse complex there looks like one of those post-war single-level tract houses in Florida. I call it the Picasso Elementary School of Architecture. Imagine a one story edifice sprawling in virtually every direction, in cubes, complete with flat roofs, and flatter prospects, and you've just about got it.

One sees three kinds of courthouses in Texas these days: 1) Proud, beautifully restored historic pre-20th century, 2) beautiful, but bedraggled and needing renovation pre-20th century, and 3) those built in the "(false)golden" era of the mid-1960s or 1970s. The latter are those where the most trendy nouveau riche held sway in these rural counties and convinced the powers-that-be to mothball the old courthouses and "modernize." Build NEW! It's the FUTURE and we want to express that "WE'RE PART OF IT." This, of course, from a generation that adopted bell-bottomed trousers and Nehru jackets. What in the hell were they thinking?

Further down US183 more, and better, examples.
Throckmorton County, Throckmorton, TX
(Hometown of Bob Lilly...and if you don't know who he is you were never a Dallas Cowboy fan.)
Interesting renovation. Modern metal roof on old granite rock building.








Shackelford County Courthouse, Albany, TX

One problem is that the trees and traffic have increased so much since these old buildings were built that one often can't get a decent picture of the building. This was a classic example of that dilemma.


This is what you get when you try to capture it all.















And on to Breckenridge in Stephens County. And this is another example of wonderful tree growth covering up a wonderful building. I like both...the trees and the building.
This may have been the most beautiful of all.

Some of the building's detail are extraordinary.
































Took a short jog out of the way to visit Eastland County.







Then back to US183 to Rising Star then down one of my favorites, US36, to Comanche County.

Comanche CH, Comanche, TX

Isn't Comanche just a great name? And a great people for which to name things, too. Most seem to forget, or don't know, that those big, bad Apaches in Arizona were there because the Comanche ran them out of Texas a few centuries earlier.

When it came to tough, in the northern plains it was the Blackfeet, in the southern plains, it was the Comanche.



And, finally, one of my favorite towns in Texas, Hamilton, in, of course, Hamilton County.
This is a beautiful little town mentioned in day 1. This time I stopped at the pharmacy and had a vanilla shake. And it was as good as I remember! Who said you can't go back?


From Hamilton it's a pretty straight jog across I-35, through Temple, and into Brenham, connecting to US290 there. But simple it wasn't to be. Riding toward Caldwell about 50 miles out of Brenham about 6:00 p.m., I saw black clouds forming in front of me. I stopped and put on my riding jacket just in time. Then the bottom fell out. To paraphrase an old Texas buddy of mine, the rain came down like a big cow peeing on a flat rock from a 30 foot bluff. If that means thick and blinding, he's nailed it. And the light show! Wow!! Ever since reading of a guy on a motorcycle being hit by lightning in Denver I've been especially paranoid about riding during lighting storms. So, paranoid I was. And blind. I was a scared boy. It got so bad I had to remove my glasses because the rain was so thick I couldn't see through them. Squinting and holding my head as low as I could I continued on because I was afraid to pull off to the side of the road; there was insufficient shoulder, and I was more concerned about cars behind me than those in front. Plus there's that lightning thing. I managed to
squeek into an Exxon gas service island outside a Wal*Mart in Caldwell after a harrowing ride of fifteen to twenty minutes.

I stayed at the service island for about 45 minutes watching the light show and wondering when animals would start pairing up. The rain had found every open slot or hole in my clothing and I was soaked underneath the jacket. Memo to riders: if you're going to wear these things in rainstorms you should perhaps close the ventilation zippers.

After the main thrust of the storm, with its accompanying lightning, moved off toward the northeast, I mounted up in a continuous rain and headed toward Brenham. It was the typical Texas afternoon thunderstorm pattern: thunder cells visible in batches as far as the eye could see. Missed about as many as I hit, and each one hit seemed thicker than the one before. But, what you do in this case is just continue on. I did, and finally got home about 8:30 p.m., sorry, even with the rain, that the ride was over. I really need to win that lottery thing so I can just ride around the country (world) at leisure.

Thanks for the company on the ride. And to Bobby J and Wayne, (Sundance and Butch) and all the other gang members and great folks at the 13th Annual Beartooth Motorcycle Rally, I just can't tell you how much fun I had, and how much I've enjoyed your company and friendship.

See you next year, if not sooner.

Jerry