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Reviewed By: James Lee on 1/3/21

I rode solo in December 2020 and found the paper map a valuable planning resource and good backup in case of technology failure. I was off route a lot intentionally and would refer to the map or app to create my route for the next day. Given it was easy to go 15+ miles and not see a single commercial establishment I was able to plan my water, snacks, and breaks better.

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Reviewed By: Hawk Mendenhall on 5/25/20

Having spent the last 18 years riding around the Texas Hill Country it was fun to finally have a map that made sense as opposed to having to rely on my memory and my many cycling friends hastily given directions. Really a well done map!

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Reviewed By: Chouwalker on 4/24/19

I rode this route in April of 2019. The route is fantastic, especially at this time of year. The weather was warm but not hot and there are wildflowers everywhere. The route took me through some very beautiful country. The roads were uncrowded and I never had to deal with cars in any way that felt uncomfortable. I did the route clockwise in 6 days. I parked at Austin Airport to start and ended my days in New Braunfels, Blanco, Fredricksburg, Llano, and Bertram (in that order). It was a miraculous ride in that i had a tail wind every single day as I rode in a giant circle (thank god I didn't go the other direction!!!). There are lots of hills, but no big climbs. Most days I was doing on the order of 55 mi and 1700 ft of elevation gain. I had both the Bicycle Route Navigator smartphone app with the route and the paper map of the route. I bought the map for the smartphone app first, but found it unusable for trip planning (hard to get the big picture on a smartphone screen). I bought the paper map for planning the trip and it was OK for that. Ironically, I bought the paper map because I hated looking at the route one small piece at at time. It turns out the paper map is also broken up into many small segments (about 30 mi each) and fails to provide a good big-picture view (except for one small overview map which lacks sufficient detail). What i really wanted was a single large map with decent detail showing the entire route. That does not seem to exist. Once on the tour, I used the Bicycle Route Navigator app exclusively to follow the route. This worked very well and I did not need the paper map on the trip. For finding services in a given location (e.g. restaurant, hotel, bike shop), Google on my smartphone was way better than either the paper map or the app.

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Reviewed By: James S. on 10/19/17

I just finished this tour with my 12-year old son. The maps are excellent. Easy to follow. Adventure Cycling has devised an ingenious method of conveying a wealth of information on a small piece of paper. I don't fault Adventure Cycling, but a decent percentage of this route is on roads with very small or non-existent shoulders. The traffic may be light, but being passed by trucks at 70 mph takes some getting used to. With that said, Texas drivers are the most courteous I have encountered, (although I suppose it only takes one bad driver to kill you.) The Texas countryside is beautiful, and I liked every town we hit. If I had one recommendation, it would be to take the Luckenback Loop. This was the best riding of the tour, and Luckenback had a nice food truck. One other recommendation - we rode clockwise from Austin. If I had it to do over, I'd take the local train to Leander, and then ride this tour counterclockwise. This would cut out some of the suburban riding around Austin - not terrible, but the worst part of the trip.

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Reviewed By: Richard Cutler on 7/3/17

We took this ride with 5 adults and 8 kids from Burnett to Blanco over Spring Break. North of Fredricksburg there were tons of wildflowers. Took a side trip to spend the night at Enchanted Rock...totally worth it. Ended up doing a rest day in Fredricksburg to see the WWII Pacific museum which was a lot of fun. Roads do not have a lot of shoulder, but the drivers were mostly friendly. One driver convinced us to take an alternate route which was a mistake...stick with the published route!