Labor Day Ride and More - Day 6

September 10, 2009
Fort Collins, CO

This has been a great visit with the folks... we like having them all to ourselves. Today, I pulled on my boots and said to Dad and Tim, who were having coffee outside that we were wasting daylight. Let's ride. Ha! We were trying to figure out which direction to head when Mom suggested a ride to the Jolly Truck Stop for breakfast. Great idea and a perfect start to the day! Thanks, Mom.

So, we rode Hwy 287 to Jolly and had a tasty down-home style breakfast at the Jolly Truck Stop Restaurant. A good many years have gone by since the last time we [Tim and I] stopped at Jolly for a meal. They have updated a bit, but the overall comfortable atmosphere is the same. Dad and his biker buddies eat at Jolly often. According to our waitress, Tim's pancake was a bit puny. The cook must be having an off-day, she said, they usually hang off the plate. Somehow he made do.

Dad asked if a dam ride in Texas would be OK? Well, yeah. We decided to repeat the ride Dad and Tim did yesterday around Lake Arrowhead. Again, it's been a long time since I had been out to Lake Arrowhead. I had forgotten much of it. Although it promised to be a hot day, the morning was fine for riding and the road was fun. The best part was riding with Dad of course, but the road snakes lazily through the Texas countryside, undulating over small mesquite-covered hills, crossing mostly-dry creeks and winding around the lake with several sharp turns and some good twisties. I had forgotten the sight of oil derricks rising like skeletal pyramids out of the glassy lake. We enjoyed every minute of it.

We stopped about half way through at the spillway which was a perfect place for a photo op. It smelled like Texas - musky and dry and prickly - of mesquite and johnson grass. It felt like Texas - warm and humid with the last of a tepid morning breeze brushing across the back of my neck. It sounded like Texas, the whir and snap of grasshoppers in the tall, dry grass and the sound of wheels on asphalt reaching my ears long before a vehicle rolled into sight. Tim pointed out several large turtles just below the surface of the water. I know, big deal - turtles. We don't see turtles up this way.


The ride back into town took us by my other brother's workplace. We visited for a bit with Kenny and John before heading back to the house.


Mom had plans for supper. We would be dining at McBride's Land and Cattle Company. What had been clear skies, turned troubling in the late afternoon. It came a frog strangler just as we headed out to McBride's. The rain was a welcome sight as this is the dry season in those parts. We had a nice supper (the food is always excellent at McBride's) and a good visit afterwards.

Here is the mini-movie I made of our ride with Dad.

Dam Ride with Dad in Texas – September 2009