Texas 3 Day Motorcycle Tour

A long weekend in Texas, 583 miles and two nights, looping north and west out of Dallas before coming back through Fort Worth. It is a short trip that still manages a proper taste of the state’s open country.

Day one is the big one at 246 miles, running north to Wichita Falls and then west to Childress, out where the panhandle begins and the horizon stops being interrupted. Day two is a gentler 156 miles south through Paducah to Abilene, a town that grew up on the cattle drives of the 1880s and still looks very much the part.

The final day is the one with the history in it. The 181-mile ride back to Dallas passes through the Fort Worth Stockyards, the old cattle district with its brick streets, longhorn drives and the Stockyards Hotel, where Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are said to have stayed in 1933. It makes a good last stop before the bike goes back.

EAGLERIDER provides the motorcycle and books both nights, with Harley-Davidson touring models alongside Triumph and BMW sport machines. Fuel, meals and insurance are separate. The riding here is straight, fast and easy rather than technical, which suits a short trip and makes it a reasonable first self-guided outing. For anyone in Dallas with three days free, or adding a weekend to a trip to Texas, it gets properly out into the open country rather than circling the suburbs, and the Stockyards make a good last afternoon before the flight home.