Day 6 – Marlin, Texas

I was awoken at 6am by the sound of Mark’s ever-more-desperately-repeated attempts to flush something in the bathroom. He likes to slip in there first thing to perform his ablutions and polish his helmet in preparation for the day. Today it sounded like something had gone horribly wrong but I felt it best not to enquire too closely.

We were both feeling the effects of our over-indulgence the night before and were vacillating about whether to stay an extra day in Galveston. It was very tempting, especially as the sun rose over the Gulf of Mexico  and the smell of sea air wafted in. Had we not had the unavoidable layover in Lake Charles we probably would have stayed but we are due to get the bikes back to NO by Monday evening so we decided to travel on. We wanted to avoid another day on the I-10 so Mark plotted a circuitous route by the back roads, which promised to be more pleasant if somewhat longer. We knew we had about 300 miles to cover so we had a long day ahead of us. 

Our journey started about 10am with a ride along the sea front to the Bolivar Peninsular Ferry. This is a free ferry (or rather several ferries, each seemingly named after local worthies – ours was the “Ray Stoker Jnr”) which takes about 15 minutes to cross from the island to Bolivar Peninsula on the mainland and also throws in a glimpse of the occasional pelican at no extra cost!

Once back on dry land we followed Highway 87 up the narrow Bolivar Peninsular with the sea on our right-hand side. The houses there were all built on tall stilts, which seems to suggest that the land must flood fairly regularly. We also caught the occasional petrochemical smell from the oil refineries and small wells with “nodding donkey” pumps were everywhere. Apart from that there wasn’t a great deal to see and we just followed the two-lane Highway 124 to a place called Winnie. Once there we couldn’t find the road that we needed to connect to and, having been misdirected by a couple of “helpful” locals we found ourselves on a small road that was running parallel to the I-10. Fortunately we spotted a vehicle inspection point, where they check out trucks travelling on the I-10, and pulled in there, and asked directions from the staff. A very kind State Trooper who had just finished her shift at the inspection point told us she was heading back the way we needed to go and offered to lead us back to the road we needed to be on. So we followed her for several miles at breakneck speed down some tiny country roads until we got to the junction we’d been looking for, which enables us to say that for at least some of our travels in Texas we had a police escort! The picture was taken just after we’d waved goodbye and pulled in to top up our tanks. 

We eventually reached Highway 287 which was a 2 lane road running through green fields and woods with a mixture of small houses, farms and RV parks lining it. We were on that for about 100 miles and apart from one stretch that was being re-surfaced and left us and the bikes covered in mud, it was a pleasure to ride. We also saw Blue Bonnets growing by the side of the road and burst into a chorus of Nancy Griffiths’ “Gulf Coast Highway”! 

The 287 took us onto I-7 and thence to Marlin which is a little place about 20 miles south of Waco. The entire journey was just over 300 miles, which is quite a distance in a day on a bike but fortunately the Triumphs run well and are reasonably comfortable so it was fine. We arrived about 6pm and the motel that we are staying at is fairly basic, like many we’ve stayed in on previous trips, but perfectly functional for what we need. We have however found that Marlin boasts precisely no bars and if there are any restaurants, we haven’t found them. It does however have a Walmart and a MacDonalds so, in contrast to yesterday’s extravagance, we have today dined on Big Macs washed down with cans of Busch beer (“clear and bright as mountain air”). 

Tomorrow we plan to cross back into Louisiana and spend the night in Shreveport.