TX visit and Tyler State Park

I know Pirate feels lonely on here so I won't let him hog the blog. I just got back from a visit to Dallas, TX. I lived there for about six years before moving to NC and this was my first trip back since. We visited friends from several spheres of our lives while residing there. Friends from Trisha's work got Friday and friends we made through church got Sunday but I spent all day Saturday with some of my mountain biking brethren. It's surprising the number of mountain bike trails that exist within the Dallas/ Ft Worth metroplex and there are a couple that are pretty challenging despite the area being very flat in general. There was some recent rain so we actually had to head out of town to the closest trail that would be rideable. Tyler State Park is about two hours east of Dallas but definitely worth the drive. It has around nine miles of trail set in a sandy soiled pine forest with some pretty good rolling hills. Kind of similar to east coast trails and they drain really fast after a rain due to all the sand. We rolled into the parking lot expecting warm weather since there was supposed to be a high of 68F that day. It took a while to get there because at 10AM it was barely breaking 40F. Add in the wind chill and none of us were dressed warm enough. After the switchbacks on loop C we were starting to get warmed up finally. The trail ends with a sustained climb that I hardly remember being that long. After a couple of laps we were really wanting a beer and after realizing that this was a dry county we had to head back to Dallas. I was missing the fine dining at Bone Daddy's so we stopped there for beer can chicken, ginormous country fried steaks, and 32oz Shiner's. That hit the spot and was a good end to a nostalgic day.