It was another 6:30 alarm morning today.  With a hotel stay, there's less packing to do and we were ready to find breakfast by 7:00.  Now it's still too dark to be properly on the road at that hour, so we put on headlights, and set all of our rear blinkers on, and headed the quarter mile to the nearest local breakfast spot.  That happened to be a tiny breakfast nook in what looked to be an old gas station.  But breakfast tacos and pastries were advertised, so we ventured in.

The place was a one woman show.  The grandmother behind the counter took our orders for 2 tacos each and then turned to the small home-style kitchen to prepare our breakfast from scratch.   Other customers who arrived while she was cooking waited patiently for her to return to the counter to take their orders.  You had to expect that with such a patient customer base the food had to be good, and we weren't disappointed.

One of the waiting customers noticed the Des Moines Register logo printed on my RAGBRAI jersey and asked if we were from Iowa.  Turns out as a child,  she went to school in Corwith/Wesley  IA where Barb's husband Ron had been superintendent for a four years.  Small world.

We got on the road about 8 under cloudy skies with moderate temperatures and the flags flying favorably. We actually risked jinxing the favorable flags by taking a photo of them.  There are a few hard core doubters out there who have ridden with me, and we decided proof positive might be worth the chance that taking a photo would change our good fortune.  We'd like to provide evidence,  but tonight we are again in a Verizon dead  zone and alas the photo is on Barb's phone, unavailable.  You'll just have to take my word for it, again.

We rode 32 service less miles into Del Rio, and then found lunch at Rudy's BBQ.  It may have just been coincidental that shortly after we arrived, no fewer than five Border Patrol agents showed up.   But we prefer to believe that were just checking on us.

This afternoon the skies cleared and the 30 miles of steady climbing through the Amistad National Recreation area  to Comstock following US 90 were warm ones.  We drank water constantly from our packs, and occasionally stopped to provide relief for hands and feet.

We cruised through the Border Patrol check station a few miles outside Comstock with just a cursory affirmation that we were American citizens, knowing that the officers already knew who we were and had been expecting us.

It was well into the 90's when we arrived in Comstock,  so we've chosen to stay at the motel in town, which happens to be next to a Border Patrol headquarters.   We are trying to cooperate.

Supper was burgers and fries at the J and P Bar and Grill,  where we spent an hour doing one of the most rewarding activities on our adventure,  talking with locals.

We have a short day planned for tomorrow into Langtry to visit Judge Roy Bean's haunts, then onto Sanderson on Wednesday, all following US 90.