Today I will take a rest day in Del Rio. I want to rest my sore butt muscle, and I have some chores to do.

Last night I researched the route for the end of my tour, now that I'm committed to end in Corpus Christi instead of San Antonio. From Del Rio I will go mostly east through the southern part of the Texas Hill country. Then I will pedal mostly south from Seguin to Corpus Christi. I expect that it will take 8 days, and I confirmed that each of the overnight destinations has lodging.

The weather the last two days has been oppressively warm and humid. As I go east and south and as the month of April progresses, the weather will likely get even more warm and humid. So I decided to mail my camping gear home and stay in motels for the remainder of the tour. The last 8 days of this tour will be a prototype for future motel-only tours. I sorted through my stuff and shipped the following stuff home at the UPS Store:

Tent
Sleeping bag
Mattress pad
Clothesline
Water filter
Pocket shower
Thermal underwear that I use only for sleeping on cold nights
Solar panel
ZipShot tripod
Rear panniers

I will still carry my stove, cooking gear, and LED headlight.

Later I had lunch at a Mr. Gatti's pizza restaurant. I haven't been to a Mr. Gatti's since I was in high school in San Antonio. After lunch I got a haircut at a hair salon next door. Only $7 thanks to their Monday special.

In the afternoon I pedaled to downtown Del Rio to look around. It has a couple of banks, plus the city hall, courthouse, etc. But about half the downtown storefronts are vacant, and most of the occupied storefronts are Latino thrift stores. The suburban area near the mall is thriving but downtown is not.

Later in the afternoon I did laundry using the Motel 6 laundry facilities. I also went to a hardware store to buy Shoo Goo to repair the separating sole on my sandals.

For the remainder of this tour I will use just underseat panniers. I tried to find a safety triangle to put on the back of my bike, now that I no longer have the rear panniers with a large area of reflective material. But I couldn't find any place that had one. At least I still have a 1W LED flasher on the back of the bike...

Today was mostly cloudy, very humid, with a brisk southeast wind. High of 87F. The sky cleared late in the day, so the late afternoon had more moderate humidity.

It was nice to take a day off and it will help to be well rested for tomorrow's very long ride.

Distance: 7.6 mi. (12.2 km)

Climbing: 244 ft. (74 m)

Average Speed: 9.8 mph (15.7 km/h)