Day 37 Cross Country Bike Trip
Tobey decided to dedicate today’s ride to Hauke, one of our German exchange students. It is his birthday today and he loved to ride bikes, so this day is for you!
What a difference a few days has made! We have gone from bundling up and running the furnace in the RV to shorts, no jacket, and keeping all of the windows in the RV open and ditching all the blankets! It was 70 degrees when Tobey started his ride this morning from Votaw.
It was cloudy most of the day and we kept expecting it to rain, but it held off, but the humidity is high.
The magnolia trees were starting to bloom when we passed through Kountze, Texas. It is a big difference from Colorado where a winter storm is going on today!
We stopped in Silsbee for lunch. On the way out of town, Tobey spotted a sign for an Ice House Museum and called me suggesting I stop to check it out.
Another lucky day for me! The museum is open Wednesday – Friday, 10:30 am – 3:00 pm and Saturdays, 9:30 – 2:00 pm. The Ice House Museum isn’t very big, but they have some nice displays explaining the history of the area around Silsbee. Judy, the woman working at the museum today, shared some of the history of the area with me, too. She was very nice and friendly!
The Ice House was built in 1928 by Gulf State Utilities. Around 1943, the production at the Ice House was 30,000 tons of ice a week. After refrigeration became the norm, people no longer needed block ice for their ice boxes and demand decreased. In 1983, the Ice House closed its doors.
In 1991, the Ice House received an historical designation and the building was restored. In addition to housing the museum, it is used for community events.
Several of the displays gave information about the rail, lumber and oil industry in the area.
Judy was busy putting up the museum’s displays for Black History Month. I found the cover of “The Negro Travelers’ Green Book” most interesting. It was originated and published by New York City mailman Victor Hugo Green from 1936 to 1966, during the era of Jim Crow Laws, when open and often legally prescribed discrimination against non-whites was widespread. Green founded and published the Green Book to avoid such problems, compiling resources "to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trip more enjoyable." The first edition of his Green Book only covered hotels and restaurants in the New York area, but he soon expanded its scope by gathering field reports from fellow postal carriers and offering cash payments to readers who sent in useful information. By the early 1940s, the Green Book boasted thousands of establishments from across the country, all of them either black-owned or verified to be non-discriminatory. That, my friends, is your history lesson for the day.
If you happen to be in Silsbee, you might want to check out their museum!
Tobey enjoyed this afternoon’s ride on Highway 96 North. The road was 4 lane – divided or with a center turning late, and a wide shoulder. The road was smooth and he had a tailwind which helped him cruise along averaging over 15mph.
All day we saw several lumber trucks and then pallet manufacturing when we got to Kirbyville. The forestry industry is still going strong in this part of Texas!
The 71.4 mile ride ended in Bleakwood today. 
We loaded the bike and drove back to Kirbyville where Tobey had gotten permission to park at the Community Center for the night.
The link to today’s ride is : https://ridewithgps.com/trips/31481194
This is a link that will show all of Tobey’s route so far. https://ridewithgps.com/events/71165-tobey-s-coast-to-coast-ride-2018-2019
On the left side of the map, it shows day by day stop and start points so you can look at each day’s route.
OR you can scroll to the bottom of the day-to-day and there is a box that says “Show all on Map”. If you click that, it will change the map view to show all days traveled so far (but be prepared for a short pause as takes a while for the file to load).
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