To get there from the Central Texas area (Temple/Belton/Killeen), take Hwy 190 West through Copperas Cove, toward Lampasas. Take 190 all the way to Brady. In Brady, wake up, tell your co-pilot to wake up, and look for 87. This is one of those towns where you come in, go around the town square, and are so intrigued by the look of the place, you forget why you're there in the first place.
Guilty. :)
Yeah, okay, so I missed the signs, and blissfully followed the signs for 190 on out of town. Before I got ALL the way out of town, I decided that something wasn't quite right - duh! If it had only been me, I wouldn't be dedicating so much space to making sure that you don't make the same mistake, but it *wasn't* just me! It was several other people I talked to also. Make a RIGHT turn onto 87 - not a LEFT turn following 190. Take 87 all the way to San Angelo. Take the 2nd Hwy 67 exit. Stay in the left lane because you'll make a left curve and go under 87. Continue on for a few miles until you see the ""**#*#@ exit. Take that exit, and turn left at the stop light, going under 67. You'll see a shopping area on your left - Wal-Mart, Dairy Queen, Chick-filet. Turn right at the stop light across from Chick-filet. You'll come to a 4-way stop - continue straight through it (after you stop, of course - cross-traffic does not stop). You'll see the park entrance on your right.
It looks flat. It IS flat. At first, second and third glance. It's when you take your fourth and fifth glances that you start to see that it may not be quite as flat as you'd thought. Remember Buffalo Springs Lake, outside of Lubbock, the site for the Buffalo Stampede back in June? There are more trees here - all mesquite - and more cactus. If cactus farming were a viable trade, this would be the nation's "cactus basket." If you aren't running airlocks or slime in your tubes, you'd better carry not just one extra tube, but several. I ended my race with 2 cactus thorns in my lower leg.
There are 40 miles of trails out there to explore. A lot of it is twisty, back and forth through the mesquite trees and cactus beds. It gets hypnotizing after a while, and you wonder, "When will it ever end?" There aren't many climbs... Well, there are a few, mostly rocky (this also isn't a place for your slicks) with loose, powdery dirt (they don't get much rain in this part of Texas), and the end of the race was an uphill finish. There were some nifty uphill switchbacks in the last half of the course that I enjoyed. In the back of the course is where you'll find the technical stuff. It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde teamed up to develop this course. There were parts that were tricky but rideable, and there were definite hike-a-bike sections. The contrast between that and the mesmerizing twistiness of the flat singletrack through the trees was noticeable!
This probably isn't a place you'd end up at the end of a "hey, let's take a road trip" discussion - it took about 3 1/2 hours to get there from Temple. But if you're going to be out there on other business, give it a try. For food and a long pause to look at autographed pictures of famous country artists, check out the steak house down the road from the HEB. For Chinese, there's a buffet across the highway from the LaQuinta where we had our pre-race registration.