On October 24, 1998, around 12 cars worth of Taurus SHO owners gathered in the Hill Country northwest of San Antonio.

After our 1st "hill country drive" last year was such a success, we decided to make it an (at least) annual event.

This time, the overall group was a bit smaller (the Houston group only had 3 cars (including myself) this time around), but we still had a blast.  The morning started off early, and cool, but we managed to warm it up a bit on the way to San Antonio after being passed by a BMW M3 and 5 series.   After Ron Fawcett and I got stuck in traffic, but after it cleared, we managed to catch up to (and after a little haggling, pass the 5 series) - I didn't see the M3 again, but Sergio stuck with him until he was nearly out of CB range.   At some point during this run, we discovered the limits of the magnet mount on Ron's CB antenna, and as we had to stop and wait for Jason Steffak anyhow, we pulled off at the next exit for "repairs".  While waiting in the gas station there, we discovered a new method being used in Texas to discourage tailgating.

After a short wait, Jason arrived - our group (now up to 5 SHOs) proceeded to Bandera where we were scheduled to meet the Dallas group.  While the "Houston group" ate lunch, a few other SHO owners arrived, including (but not limited to) Daniel Bonds and Sam Bulger - our group was now up to 9 SHOs!  After we'd finished our food, we went outside to enjoy the warming day and look over each other's SHOs while waiting for the Dallas group.  Items of interest included a spoiler mounted on the rear and a custom air intake scoop on the front of Sam's car, as well as Jason's amplifier setup for his "full body experience" stereo and  custom lighting system built into the front lower grille.
 
After waiting for awhile past the time we were supposed to leave, we figured the Dallas group got delayed somewhere along the way, and started our drive on the hope we'd run into them somewhere along the way.  We left Bandera, stopping a few times along the way for brief photo ops, and then proceeded into the hills for the fun driving.  Between the radio communications we had, and the limited access nature of most of the "country roads" we were on, we had a good time driving for the next couple of hours - keeping up decent speeds, enjoying the twisty roads, passing many slower vehicles, and even occasionally passing each other.  By our next stop, however, we discovered the one problem we all shared that day - BUGS!  They were the one constant throughout the day, covering the front end of everyone's cars with an assortment high speed impacted bug bodies.  Mental note for next years run - time it so that we don't coincide with the "running of the bugs".

After a few stops, we made it into Rocksprings - one of the towns we'd planned to make a brief stop in, and were amazed to find the Dallas group waiting for us there!  We quickly added another couple of SHOs (and a Mustang GT) to our ranks.  Chris Klaus explains what happened to the Dallas crowd :

Initial planning was for the Dallas-Fort Worth group to meet in Hillsboro at the Hillsboro Outlet mall and leave promptly at 8:00am.  When 8:00 rolled around, Kerby Haltom/Jonathan Ashkenaze (White 97 Mustang GT), Steve Bates (Green 91+), and Chris/Nancy Klaus (Opal Frost 94) were ready to roll.  Knowing Jeremy Fishman would soon show up, we waited up to 8:15.  Waiting as long as we could with no Jeremy in sight, we took a quick stroll over to McDonalds for one last bathroom/food run before the long drive to Bandera.  However, it wasn't until 8:45am that the DFW group finally started heading south due to a very busy McDonalds filled with high school kids.  Just before we actually departed south, Kerby and Nancy noticed what looked to be a white 93 SHO heading southbound on IH35.  Could this be Jeremy?  We assumed it was him and thought he will beat us to Bandera.  We couldn't let this happen!

During our drive along 35, we adhered to our initial plans and drove westbound on 190 past Fort Hood to southbound 281 where we were initially going to stop for go-go juice.  Hearing Kerby saying "how's everyone doing on gas?  Can we hold out another 20 minutes?"  Well, 20 minutes came and went and nothing was in sight.  Why?  We were on the wrong highway and headed straight to Austin!  At this point we finally came to a gas station and regrouped, having to backtrack back on to 281 via 29.  This easily cost us another 20-30 minutes.  Total time behind schedule....one hour-15 minutes.

At this point, Nancy and Jonathan were conversing back and fourth via CB to decide what we should do as Jonathan tried to contact David Bonds via cell phone.  Having no luck getting in touch with David, our ultimate decision was to skip part of the planed Fall Run route and intercept those meeting in Bandera somewhere along the path.  But where?  We decided to go as far as the intersection of 41 and 336 and backtrack.  Upon our arrival (and to our surprised amazement) 336 was closed to through traffic due to heavy flooding the prior week!  Now came the big decision.  Would the group travel on 336 anyway?  Would they go north via 83 instead? (83 runs parallel to 336)  Or would they cut out half the route including the portion allowing "TOP END RUN" and "twisting four lane NASCAR run" of Hwy 41 and Hwy 55, respectively?  With Sergio and Bob leading the pack, NO WAY!  Therefore we decided to go to the next stop of Rocksprings and wait for their arrival.  No later than a half-hour later while the DFW group (Kerby, Jonathan, Steve, Chris, and Nancy) was grabbing lunch, a snake of SHO's was spotted through the Café window.

We all immediately jumped out of our seats and ran out side to flag down the rest of the Fall Run participants.  Oh yea, Jeremy did not make it for he had a blowout in North Dallas.

We finalized the evening by stopping at The Stonehenge of Texas, where not only did we get to see a scaled down replica of Stonehenge, but a couple of stone heads similar to the statues on Easter Island.  After that, we ran out of daylight, and decided to call it an evening, heading in our separate directions, with smiles on our faces from a long day of fun driving.

All that remained was to clean up - both the coating of bugs that all our cars received, the dirt in the wheel wells from offroading, as well as the brake dust burned off during exciting moments in the corners and curves of the Texas Hill Country!

See ya next year!