Missouri Segment
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| Date | Miles | Comments | Stop |
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5/29 | 86
| [6/6 Update] Hard day but good.
Rode 35 miles north to Chester where a bridge crosses the Mississippi. (This bridge
was in the film "In the Heat of the night" with Sydney Potier and Rod
Steiger.) Also the guy who developed Popeye was from Chester so there were Popeye
likenesses all over town. I measured the width of the Mississippi as I rode across
the bridge. 0.3 miles was what I got. The guy at the park in Grand Tower said
it was a mile wide but I think he was wrong. Missouri has hills. And it was pretty hot. When I got to Farmington I had done over 80 miles. As I was looking for a place to eat I met a woman planting flowers in a big pot outside a restaurant. She told me that it was a good restaurant and the fact that her son was the owner did not influence her opinion. I wound up eating there with her and her husband. I even had a beer. Most of Kentucky was dry and there were not any restaurants anyway so having a beer was something different. Every Thursday night is chess night and the chess players kept streaming in. They all stopped to talk to the couple I was dining with and so I got introduced to the chess intelligencia of the area. Great evening. I spent so long at dinner (I do get conversation deprived sometimes) that it was almost dark when I got to my motel. | Farmington |
Tough day with rain and hills. The afternoon was hot and muggy. Stopped early and cleaned my bike. [6/6 Update] The road out of Farmington
was narrow with heavy traffic. And, as luck would have it, it started to rain
when I was a half mile out of town. But the rain didn't last long and neither
did the traffic. After about 40 miles I reached Centerville, the county seat of
Randolph County. The whole town looked like it was in shambles, except for the
court house which was a beautiful brick building with granite monuments in the
front comemerating those who died in WWI, WWII, Korea and Viet Nam. | Ellington | ||
Met a friend from Milwaukie -- one of the things that motivated me to do the trip. Went to some springs that output 81 million gallons of water per day into the Jack's Fork River! There are springs here because of the limestone deposits. [6/6
Update] I got up early and rode to Emenence. The hills were fantastic.
Sometimes the descents were so steep that I was a little scared. Emenence is in
the heart of the Ozarks, at least on the cross section cut by MO highway 106.
Of course there were ascents that were equivalent to the descents but I had to
climb them and it was tough going. Even though it was only 28 miles, it took me
over 3 hours to reach Emenence. | Eminence | ||
| [6/6 Update] My friends didn't leave until a little before noon so I just rode in the afternoon. The first 15 miles were really hard and it was hot, but after that, even though it was still hot, the hills gradually moderated to the point where I could get up enough speed going down to get up the other side. What a thrill!! | Houston | ||
It was raining in the morning, so I waited. My cell phone didn't work, so I decided to leave. It rained for the first 25 miles, then it relented. Changed my clothes at a gas station. That night I met Elaine who had driven down from Kansas City. [6/6 Update] It was raining at 7:30
when I was ready to go. There was another cyclist staying at the same motel. He
decided to stay in Houston all day because the rain was predicted for the whole
day. I decided to ride because Elaine was going to meet me in Marshfield and I
didn't have any way to contact her and tell her to go to Houston instead. It rained
till about 2:00 pm I stopped and changed my clothes in a gas station because everything
was sopping wet, even my shoes, which I could not change. I put on dry socks and
then put plastic grocery bags around my feet to keep the water out. | Marshfield |
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