Touring - Proposed first tour—Ft Worth TX to San Marcos, Tx.

With work constraints limiting available time off and not wanting to ignore my family through my entire vacation, I'm considering making this trip. After 3 days on the road, I'll meet my ladies at the Schlitterbahn waterpark. After a day or two of playing there, we'd drive back together.

Here's the proposed route.

http://tinyurl.com/36389l

After mapping it, I reconsidered the stops, thinking it might be better to add a little mileage on the first two days. For one thing, the country gets much hillier the farther South one goes and for another, I'd like to not be totally spent by the time I arrive at the waterpark.

There's also an option of having the ladies meet me on the last pull and trade the tour bike for our tandem and let my daughter finish with me.

Any suggestions, or comments? Has any one of you ridden any of this route? Do any of you care to go along with me?

my only suggestion? Wait until September or October. Any time between now and September will be HOT. But you're in FW, I don't have to tell you that ;)

(<-- an ex-Dallasite)

Nah, today would be the best day to start. 72°, with a 15 mph tailwind!

As you get further south, not only does it get hillier, but the prevailing wind starts moving south. I would definitely recommend you get as far as you can on the first day. Once you get past Burnet it is constant 300 foot rollers.

CardiacKid - What's 281 like down that way? Wide shoulders? Is it one of those parts of Texas where people in slower cars move over to the shoulder to let faster cars pass? Is there a better route that I'm not seeing?

With work constraints limiting available time off and not wanting to ignore my family through my entire vacation, I'm considering making this trip. After 3 days on the road, I'll meet my ladies at the Schlitterbahn waterpark. After a day or two of playing there, we'd drive back together.

Here's the proposed route.

http://tinyurl.com/36389l

After mapping it, I reconsidered the stops, thinking it might be better to add a little mileage on the first two days. For one thing, the country gets much hillier the farther South one goes and for another, I'd like to not be totally spent by the time I arrive at the waterpark.

There's also an option of having the ladies meet me on the last pull and trade the tour bike for our tandem and let my daughter finish with me.

Any suggestions, or comments? Has any one of you ridden any of this route? Do any of you care to go along with me?

If you are not enamored with riding on high traffic US highways, I'd suggest looking at the FWBA's route from Ft. Worth to Austin at http://www.fwbaclub.org/ride/maps.cfm.

From Austin, there is a route to San Antonio that takes you through San Marcos at http://bicycleaustin.info/getaround/route-sanantonio.html.

On this route, natural stopping points would be Waco and Austin at about 100 miles each day, with a shorter last day to your destination.

I'm not a big fan of riding US highways unless necessary. They tend to have a lot of traffic and if you ride in the shoulder, you are more likely to have rough chip seal (rougher than the traffic lane) and more debris.

If you wanted to come down through Granbury, you could work your way down through Meridian to Waco and pick up the FWBA route from there. I've ridden your route from Granbury to just past Paluxy and the road is fine for cycling though the area around Paluxy is pretty hilly. The area south of Paluxy, through Hico should be pretty low traffic as well. The parts of the route that are likely to be highest traffic is US 281 south of Lampasas.

[EDIT] Oh, and US 377 between Benbrook and Granbury could be pretty busy.

The parts of the route that are likely to be highest traffic is US 281 south of Lampasas.

[EDIT] Oh, and US 377 between Benbrook and Granbury could be pretty busy.

Yeah, 281 south of Lampasas is all busy 4 lane with hardly any areas with shoulders. It's this way all the way to Hwy 71 south of Marble Falls. Speed limit is 70mph, few slowpokes.

Good info.
Small world, Supcom - I rode with the "Eddie" that made most of those maps with AutoCAD tonight in Ft Worth. He's a terrific resource.

Update, it looks like scheduling will work out so that we all drive down to San Marcos, then I ride back to Ft Worth. I like that better, it puts the biggest hills at the first part of the ride and the prevailing winds at my back. Maybe my ladies will camp with me the first night on the road, as well.

My route's hardly going to look like what I originally posted at all, staying East of I35 all the way to Waco, and riding quite a bit closer to it the rest of the way...