Lone Star Rally Takes Over Galveston Thursday Through Sunday: Texas's Biggest Motorcycle Weekend Is Four Days Out
About 400,000 visitors and more than 150,000 motorcycles, by the organizers' count, roll onto Galveston Island November 5-8 for the Lone Star Rally - The Strand, Pier 21 and the Seawall, 40-plus bands, and a causeway Houston drivers should plan around.
GALVESTON - The island's loudest weekend starts Thursday. The Lone Star Rally runs November 5-8 across Galveston, billed by Visit Galveston as the country's biggest four-day motorcycle rally and by its organizers as the largest motorcycle rally in Texas, with an expected draw of about 400,000 visitors and more than 150,000 motorcycles over the four days.
The rally's ground zero is downtown: The Strand at 23rd Street around Saengerfest Park, with additional venues at Pier 21 and at Beach Central Park on Seawall Boulevard. The Strand opens at 10 a.m. on rally days. The program runs to more than 40 bands alongside bike and car shows, motorcycle rodeo games, tattoo and sound competitions, the Miss LSR contest and hundreds of vendors - the formula that makes the rally one of Galveston Island's biggest annual events.
For Houston, the rally is a traffic story before it is a party. The Gulf Freeway and the Galveston causeway carry the load in both directions, heaviest on Thursday and Friday inbound and again Sunday outbound, and island parking fills early near the Strand and the Seawall. Drivers not headed to the rally do best to treat I-45 south of the Beltway as a slow road from Thursday onward and to cross to the island early in the day if they must go.
The rally closes Galveston's six-weekend fall run on the Strand and the Seawall, and lodging across the island books out well ahead - the standing local advice, repeated in this year's guides, is to book rooms months in advance for rally weekend and to check the official rally site for the final schedule, maps and any parking changes before heading down.
