We hit hills on this stretch! Granted they weren’t too big, but I was so shocked I couldn’t quite process it at first. We did climb steadily the whole ride, along with the few real hills. We had awful heat and humidity and headwinds again, and despite the boost we’d gotten from Bill and Sheila, we decided to stop at Wadsworth. Matagorda, our original destination, was another twenty-five miles down the road, and we knew we’d never make it, as the headwinds were really fierce by that time.
We stopped outside Guffy’s, a small local store, to ask about a place to put up our tent. We quickly met a local construction company owner, Mr. Talasek (I’ve forgotten his first name) who said we could put up a tent at his house. We took off following him but a block away he stopped at a large open space with several trailers and asked if we’d mind staying there.
It didn’t have the best feeling to us, nor did it have water or bathroom facilities, but it did have a nice space in shade, so we agreed; our new host called the owner of the trailer park and cleared it that we could camp there at no charge.
The trailer park is the low-rent housing solution for the town of Wadsworth; we were grateful that it was only inhabited by a few quiet folks in trailers at the time we there (we heard horror stories later). Our closest neighbors adopted us for the day – a husband and wife with two girls. Angel, the youngest, was having her tenth birthday that day, so the family invited us to join them for fishing in Matagorda and for a barbecue and cake later.
They disappeared up to do shopping in Bay City for several hours, while Chelsea and I just sat, finally rousing ourselves to put up the tent. On their return they gave us ice for our water bottles and gave us a whole jug of fresh water.
We eventually declined the offers of fishing and barbecue and cake, as we were so tired and hot. We spent the day trying not to notice the downwind smell of the overflowing dumpster, and trying not to notice how awfully hot it was. We somehow just waited out the day and got to bed as early as possible.
We had to bicycle over to a local Shell gas station and convenience store to use the facilities before bed, and we never got a shower or washed our hot sweaty clothes.
We did get noticed by the locals, in particular by a couple of rough-looking characters who decided we were a hot item. These guys would pull up right smack next to us and talk thorough the window of their pickup truck, trying to convince us to have a beer with them and go to the Colorado River the next day for a picnic with them. By seven at night, on their second or third pass through, as they were getting drunker and drunker, we finally convinced them we weren’t interested and they took off.
Looking back on it, Wadsworth had as little personality as any town we’ve been in for quite a while. It’s an extremely small town, “at the edge of nowhere” as the locals kept saying. Drinking seemed to be the local sport for most locals, and we noticed how many of the folks we saw, both men and women, who were missing most of their teeth.
Though we got to be at a decent hour, the coyotes were out in full force for quite a while during the night, howling and spooking the horses across the street. The horses reacted with a lot of foot stomping and nervous whinnying for a long time. Then it started raining at two a.m. and we hadn’t tarped the bikes or trailers, so we were up doing that till 2:30.
We were glad to be out of Wadsworth, but we did receive two final acts of kindness – the clerk at Guffy’s let us fill our water bottles with ice at no charge, and a local guy gave us a great tip – telling us to take CR 2538 into Palacios, our next stop.