:beer: that makes all the sense in the world. And how I felt about Colorado before moving here. Check out Denton (seriously). I'd say McKinney but the Plano sprawl has caught up to it by now....

So I'm in McKinney ... :) the sprawl ain't so bad and I can get to empty country roads to the north pretty easily.
Actually it's like a video game ... new levels keep opening up every few months to bike on. And these new suburban roads are clean, smooth and empty!
Denton ... all the college kids chew up and spit out the cheaper housing ... I considered it. Your mileage may vary.

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I don't think you'll find a "good" answer.
Lots of cycling going on implies lots of people, which is Dallas, Plano, places like that.
"Riding to the grocery store" works great for me here in Garland, which is part of the DFW metromess. It just depends on where the stores are in relation to your house, and I can get to two or three different stores via mainly alleys and bike trails. That's not to say it's some sort of cycling Nirvana.
Lots of places may have good cycling and NO grocery store, the folks just drive 20 miles to the next town for groceries.
In a lot of places, if you want to do lots of cycling, your best option is a gravel bike and go seek out gravel roads.
Alpine is not that large, but actually has some cycling going on (college town) and has enough hills in the area to be interesting. We rode through on our recent Big Bend tour.
I've got friends that run a bike shop in Sherman, but they like gravel riding.

I guess I just started "gravel riding" myself (using a full-suspension 29er) and it's really opened up a lot of riding opportunities in smaller towns without an expansive residential/secondary street network.
I'm able to explore the dirt country roads, with very little motor vehicle traffic ... and what traffic there is goes VERY slowly due to road conditions.
I've started using the Chaparral rail-to-trail ... it starts at Farmersville and "theoretically" goes all the way to Paris, but it's undeveloped with deep tire ruts from motor vehicles just north of Merit, so that's where I get off and switch to dirt roads.
I'll have to explore the Sherman/Denison area next ... maybe I can find that bike shop?:)

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Thanks StephenH, but I want to be in a town not a city. Garland TX at 238,000 is just to big for me. I did ride my motorcycle through Alpine about eight years ago sadly no Hospital that I could see. I need to be within 30 minutes of one. When you retire this is something one need to consider.

On the way to Big Bend the monster bugs running across the road really amazed me like scorpions, tarantulas, and I’ve never seen centipedes as big around as my thumb and what looked like up to a foot long. In Big Bend I looked across the Rio Grande river that wasn’t more than a trickle that I could have easily walked across I was very disappointed thinking it was going to be just that a river. Big Bend Ranch state park is so beautiful I camped out there for the night making sure the tent was always fully zipped up!

I was NOT recommending Garland, just pointing out that the grocery-store criteria was not too hard to satisfy in some cases!
By comparison, where I work in Euless is an older neighborhood, not any better or worse than Garland, but to get to the grocery store from there by bike would be a major hassle.
I have thought along some similar lines with no conclusion. One issue is, all my friends are around here. And my grandbaby, for that matter!
I think the property taxes are lower in some of the smaller areas.
I grew up south of Houston, and can say there's some pretty considerable differences in climate (heat, humidity, wind, cold) and terrain (hilly vs flat) around the state, and that might help narrow it down.
There is a hospital of sorts in Alpine: About Us | Big Bend Regional Medical Center
That said, if you want a "real" hospital, you need to be within an hour or two of the major population centers.
I've enjoyed good health, but my wife and mother-in-law are constantly at various doctors, so they would pretty much need to stay in a metro area or be prepared to do a lot of driving.

Thanks StephenH. So far for the lay of the land I like East TX the best. It has some flat and some up and down. But mostly it has some trees. For temps I like Galveston but not to keen on the hurricanes. I do need to get to College Station of a look. But I feel it’s going to be to big for my taste.

I am coming back for a week in January for a look at TX in the winter time. I do know when you get a northern coming down from Canada things can change drastically so I’ve been told.

So today I took the Santa Cruz Tallboy LTc to Sherman with the urban wheels with city tires ... rode around 32 miles in the central area ... boy, this town is a dump! Tar-paper shacks and rundown houses with little or no paint. There is a "historic district" with a few old mansions ... right next to tar-paper shacks. Depressing.
I'm sure there are some nicer homes in the outlying areas, next to bicycle unfriendly roads. Of course I took the fat tire bike because the city streets are not what one would call smooth and well-maintained. Also, for some reason, there is a 3-hour parking limit everywhere around the city square. Weird. The only other bikes I saw riding around were on the homeless end of the spectrum.

I'm doing more fat tire tours of small towns ... Denison and Denton are on the list.

I’ve never cared much for any of states US Mexico southern border towns I’ve been in. Just an odd unsettling feeling I get when I’m there.

Below a certain size, a town just isn't going to have a grocery store or a hardware store at all.

Because I live in central Texas, my knowledge of what's out there is biased toward that. Kerrville was the first town I thought of that might meet your criteria. It's near some of the prettiest country in the state, and I've done a lot of riding on the farm-to-market roads around there. But yeah, the main drag is a highway through town, and either you reconcile yourself to that or you look somewhere else. It's close enough to Austin and San Antonio that you've got reasonable access to airports and other big-city amenities. It has its own real hospital (something else that is vanishing from small town in Texas). I'd be surprised if there were one inch of bike lanes in town, but there is a pretty good bike store.

Alpine is extremely remote, but it's in another one of my favorite parts of Texas. The nearest major city would be El Paso. Again, it's a big enough town to be self-contained in terms of urban amenities.

San Marcos is a small city with a fairly large student population. Its downtown is very accessible for cyclists and pedestrians. Increasingly, Austin (and to a lesser extent San Antonio) are encroaching on it, and I would not be surprised to see it become a bedroom community for Austin.

I took the Santa Cruz Tallboy LTc with urban tires (in anticipation of bad roads) out to explore some more small towns last weekend in North Texas.

Denison. North of Sherman just below the Oklahoma border. Much more charm and less depressing than Sherman. Mid-century architecture abounds. Efforts to revitalize historic Main Street ... antique shops, Studebaker museum (that always seems to be closed) ... the fat tires came in handy for some red brick streets, cracks and potholes. If you thought Texas was flat, Denison has some serious hills ... I used ALL the gears in my 3x10 drivetrain, often within 200 feet. I rode about 42 miles, north to the edge of Lake Texoma and south almost to Sherman on the small farm roads. Very little traffic. I could see living here, but not sure where to ride my road bikes.

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Paris. There's a rail-to-trail from the Eiffel Tower (yeah, they kinda have one) that goes east to Blossom and beyond, where it quickly becomes unusable. I enjoyed the scenery, water fountains and portable toilets along the way, but the pavement was cracked and bumpy, which the full-suspension bike soaked up. Another 42-mile ride, though a good chunk was past Blossom where I struggled through a barely usable double track with some deep sections of gravel (could have used my dirt tires for that part) and ended up using a paved more major road to loop back westward. I haven't explored Paris proper with the bike yet, but I know the streets are of usual small-town disrepair. They do sponsor the Tour de Paris in the summer, which I've done a couple of times on the farm-to-market roads, which are smoother.



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Thanks adamrice, I now have Kerrville on my list. City Data shows it to be low crime rate and tornado as well.

Thanks zbillster,
For the tip and the photos. I’ll have a look, Paris looks interesting. I like the traditional town square lay out.

In my motorcycle days, I often would go to Bonham, between Sherman and Paris. Nice antique stores in the downtown square, flea markets on weekends, and the Sam Rayburn house tour.

Any body cycle in Brownwood, TX? If so what are your thoughts?

Cross Greenville, Texas off your list. I did a fat tire tour of it yesterday. Not too many residential streets to ride on, and they are in awful condition. You're blocked in by heavily trafficked highways and farm-to-market roads, so hard to get a substantial ride in. I rode on one empty road 2100 south of town ... it lead to some industrial plants, and the road looked like it had been detonated with mines. A couple of artsy dives in the historic downtown, but I see a lot of small towns trying the strategy of "Let's put up a couple of colorful wall murals to make this place look happening!" but no real activity.

Thank’s for the report?

I stayed at the BestWesten there some ten years ago when I was on my motorcycle. The roads were okay then but at that time it didn’t look to safe to riding around on a bicycle.

You may be in for a problem. Smaller towns don't have much in the way of amenities. I live in Dripping Springs. There is a lot of great hill country back roads, but I would not ride to HEB or Home Depot, they are on main and very unsafe streets. But I can drive to downtown Austin in 30+ minutes depending on the time of day. Austin has a lot of bike trails and they are expanding all the time. Soon you will be able to take a bike trail from Austin to San Marcos.

You may want to try Fredericksburg, Boerne or Kerrville.

Thanks johnk3, I'll add Boerne to my list. Looking at CityData.com it looks promising.

Another town you should put on your list is Brenham. Its population is just under 18,000, is home to Blue Bell Creameries and Blinn College (a feeder to Texas A&M), and is about halfway between Houston and Austin on US290. I start or ride through Brenham quite often and have yet to be honked at. Start a ride in the center of town and in 10 minutes you'll be on well-paved roads through rolling hills with light traffic.

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Thanks Brad L,
Brenham looks like a nice town. I plan on coming back down as soon as TX lifts the travel ban.

I loved cycling around Austin city limits. San Marcos river is also a great place to do it