Many of the counties in the western half of the Texas hill country are sparsely populated, which means the counties don’t have a very large tax base. Consequently, many county roads are not only dirt, but are only sporadically maintained. It’s just too expensive for the counties to incur the cost of paving them and then maintaining them when they are so lightly used. The road below, taken during TAR 2017, is an example of what I mean. It is a county road but very lightly travelled so it doesn’t see (or need) a lot of maintenance. Which makes it perfect for the type of riding we like to do.