Day 3 – August 24, 2004

{Photos} Ride from Texarkana, Texas to Beaumont, Texas {Home}

We got a late start today and managed to miss the spread they laid out at the restaurant, so we decided to go on down the strip a little ways and find a place we could eat that still had a little shade for Diamond. As we left we noticed an Arkansas sign and then on the other side of the street a Texas sign. As we drove down the strip, we just kept crossing back and forth. We must have gone in and out of Texas a dozen times and we were on our way to Louisiana. The sun was already hot and it wasn’t even 9:30. We had no luck finding a place to eat, so we gassed up and decided to go to the next little town down the line. But as luck would have it we were not in a very food oriented part of the country or at least not on this road. The roads are pretty good though here, but the scenery looks a lot like what we have see most of the trip so far. As beautiful as they are, I find myself looking for something a little different. Diamond seemed to be having the time of her life, but I noticed that after about 50 miles or so she starts to get a little rowdy if we don’t give her a little break. There seems to be a lot of horse ranches through here as well as crops, corn mostly, but still the scenes are similar. We rode all the way to Shreveport, Louisiana before we located something. I don’t think either of us was very hungry early on anyway and by the time we did eat it was after noon, but we still wanted breakfast. So we stopped at a Waffle House and found some shade right outside the window so that Diamond could see us while she waited. After the needed repast, we hopped onto the freeway for a short ride to our cut off. Wouldn’t you know it, as soon as we hit the onramp, it started pouring rain. It stopped about 10 seconds later before we reached the end of the on ramp. We got off the freeway on our side road and stopped at a nearby gas station where we were informed by a local that Louisiana now requires helmets. I think I will have to check into that because my list shows otherwise. Still we were only about 6 miles from the Texas boarder on a back road so we decided to chance it. We stopped at the boarder to get a couple of pictures with the state emblem, but then I had to take a phone call, so we stopped a couple of miles into the state at a roadside park. I’ll give the Texans one thing; most of the road side parks I have ever stopped at are very nice. We were there for just over an hour and by the time we left Diamond was already waiting on the bike before I got to it. As we begin our ride through Texas we do manage to see a lot more water, but I am noticing a difference that I wasn’t really looking for. One of the things I have always liked about riding is the odors. When you pass a bakery, an oriental restaurant, fast food places, flower gardens, etc. you smell some of the things that you will never get driving. But when you are driving through eastern Texas and it has recently rained, the odor you get from decaying vegetation is not one of my favorite smells. We rode through Jasper, Kirbyville, and Silsbee, three towns that grew up in and around, but even though I had been there as a small child, none of it looked familiar at all to me. Still it brought back some memories of getting burnt to a crisp in my Uncle’s pool and a lot of bugs and my mom screaming when a small lizard ran across a window sill. Amazing what the mind can recall isn’t it? As we finally arrive in Beaumont, our stopping location for today, I notice two very interesting sights. The first is the Harley dealer sign. It actually says Harley Davidson “Cowboy” on it. The second is that directly across the street is a Dealership complex called “Mike Smith Autoplex” It seems that I sell many different kinds of cars and I didn’t even know it. Well it’s time to call it quits, so I’ll see you on the byways…