This morning Natalie was still sick and cantankerous, so Jimmy stayed home to take care of her.  Rain was falling pretty hard, so I wasn't in a hurry to leave either, but I did around 8.  The rain continued nonstop until I got to my campsite around 3, and was intermittent after that.

Because of the rain, I only stopped when I found shelter, which wasn't as often as I would have liked.  The new seat position put more strain on my Achilles' tendons, so they began to hurt even as my knees showed dubious progress.

Cedar Hill State Park is just south of the metro area, and alas it's close to a highway, so there's a lot of racket.  When I checked in I made sure I got a site with a shelter over the picnic table (not knowing the rain would soon stop) and that ice was available for purchase (not knowing the shop that sold it would close early due to the weather).  I got a real shock: Texas state parks are expensive!  Not only did they charge me $18 for the night, but their day use fees are $5 per person, not per car, so I had to pay that as well, making the total even higher than a Michigan state park!  And unfortunately it looks like most of my camping options between here and Austin will be state parks.  But there won't be many of them... I could get there as soon as Sunday.

15.3 mi

I woke this morning feeling exhausted.  I had gone to bed early, having stayed up late the previous two nights with Chris and Jimmy, but what with the insects buzzing around my mosquito-netted head all night I hadn't slept well.  When I looked in the mirror, I saw that the mosquitos had bitten all over my forehead, so in addition to having freckles, I now appear too have acne!

I puttered around for the better part of an hour in a toxic daze before I remembered I had had beans at lunch yesterday!  Armed with that explanation for my malaise, I was able to get my act together at last.  If I have this condition long enough, I'll eventually work out a system to remind myself when it's been 18 hours after eating legumes!

Due to the late start, I didn't make it all the way to Dinosaur Valley State Park.  I got to Cleburne around 3 and stopped to chat with a computer dealer who let me use his dialup line.  I decided to ride to Cleburne State Park, which looked closer -- on the map.  An old lady in a car who pulled over to ask about my bike tried to discourage me from going to the Cleburne park, but I headed there anyway.

It was farther than it looked on the map.  Much farther.  I arrived after all the staff had left for the night, so no ice... but I did rig up a clothesline inside my tent so I could at least elevate my legs during dinner and bedtime.

I think the key to taking better care of myself in these last few days before Austin will be to plan on fewer miles, so that I'll have time to get the ice and other supplies I need.

49.3 mi

It was a short ride today from Cleburne SP to Dinosaur Valley SP.  I reasoned that if I felt ambitious, I could make the park just a day trip and ride south in the afternoon, and if I didn't, I could just stay here.

On the way to the park, I visited the Creaton Evidence Museum, at Malinda's recommendation.  It's amazing the sorts of things people will invent to justify an existing belief.  The "science" behind this version of the creation story supposes that the world used to be smaller than it is now and had a "firmament" made of a magenta, crystalline substance that later fell as rain during the Flood.  Then there's the 'hyperbaric biosphere," where plants and animals are grown under magenta light at 2 atmospheres of pressure and high electomagnetic fields of unspecified frequency, to simulate antedeluvian conditions.

Of course the reason for the museum's placement, en route to the state park, is to contest the park's claims that the fossil footprints are millions of years old.  Instead, the museum asserts that dinosaurs lived alongside people five thousand years ago.

Anyhow, I got to the park around 2:00 and found a sign at the entrance saying "no tracks visible."  Come to find out, all the tracks are underwater most of the time, and when the river is high, e.g. after a day of rain, they can't be seen.  So I came all this way and don't get to see the tracks.  I was tempted to ride on down the road just to show my frustration, but my joints were sore, and the place did sell ice... so I stayed to dry my laundry and look at the exhibits and ice my joints real good.

20.8 mi

Today was pretty uneventful... I kept waiting for the predicted "partly cloudy" weather to materialize, but I only saw the sun for about 15 minutes total.  When I was a few miles from my evening destination of Clifton, rain started falling, and it got gradually more intense as I rode into town.

I had planned to camp at Texas Safari RV park -- that was the reason Clifton was my destination -- but I stopped at the Clifton Inn on my way into town.  The clerk had burn scars all over her face and arms -- she looked like a Halloween mask, but her eyes were fine, and they lit up when I declined her first offer, as if she hadn't haggled since leaving India.  Once I saw the room I realized her first offer had been plenty reasonable.

The rain stopped as soon as I paid for the room, naturally, but soon enough it started again and carried on dramatically for several hours.  I watched an entire movie while icing my joints -- a luxury I can't get at a campground!  When I took a shower, I started hearing strange noises and imagined a tornado approaching, but it turned out to just be weird echoes in the shower stall.

I'm hoping to get all my laundry dry so that I won't have to carry around wet clothes for the next few days, aside from the ones I'm wearing in the rain.

38.4 mi