HavengaBikeRide

It rained a lot during the night as we slept. The report said it rained about 0.9" so glad that we were inside for the night! When we looked out at the Mississippi before we left, there was all sorts of branches and logs floating down rapidly on our side of the river.   The road from Louisiana to Hannibal at first was fairly flat as we were in the bottomlands of the Salt River.   When we eventually crossed it, we were amazed by amount of large logs and other smaller debris moving almost continually downstream, sometimes in large clumps,  because of the recent storms.   We realized that was the source of most of what we were seeing in the Mississippi as it empties out just upstream from Louisiana.     After crossing the river, we left the bottomlands and found the landscape became  quite hilly;  we had to push our bikes up a few of them and this was a state highway.  In spite of it being a state highway, traffic was ...

Cuivre River State Park to Louisiana, MO Sunday, April  28    Hooray!  No rain or thunderstorms during the night!  We stayed dry!   With today being Sunday, we had looked ahead of time for a church along or near our route that we could get to in a timely fashion and we discovered New Hope Baptist Church 11 miles from the park right on the route. We calculated what time we would need to leave to get there on time plus allowing for a strong headwind or a flat tire, so decided to set an alarm.  But we got to bed a little after 9 so woke up before the alarm went off, ate, packed up, and were on the road a litte after 8.  Unbeknown to us, the church has a breakfast on the 4th Sunday of the month and we got there in time for the breakfast, Sunday School and the church service.  We felt very welcomed and besides being fed, we were even given church shirts. We appreciated Pastor Steve's message about reaching out to others who are different from us o...

  Today started out with no rain and dry roads. We're also quite pleased that all of our equipment had gotten dry.  Most of the mud we had gotten cleaned off the night before and much of what remained we could brush off now that it was dry.     Our route sent us down about 3 more miles of Katy trail but we were afraid of getting very muddy again so instead we rode 3 miles of a busy road with okay shoulders. We even had a tailwind that pushed us along. The route from Marthasville to Troy, Missouri was quite good as far as traffic, quality of road and beauty of scenery. As we were working our way out of the Missouri River Valley we did have one hill that was STEEP and we had to push our bikes up most the way.     We debated about where to stay because there's talk of thunderstorms tonight but decided to camp beyond Troy at Cuivre River (pronounced quiver) State Park.  We went for a little over 2 mile walk that included 118 down stairs and 141 s...

  Brentwood to Washington MO   It rained overnight and was also raining a little this morning, so we waited until about 9 am to leave.  Everyone had a better night's sleep as the puppy slept until 4:45 then Jim took her outside. She quieted quickly so we all got some more sleep after that.    Leaving Brentwood (a St Louis suburb), we used a number of surface streets to get to the Adventure Cycling Association's suggested route, then took that out of the city. Traffic was ok and roads were well chosen.  Saw some very fancy homes in Ladue (another suburb of St Louis). As we neared the Missouri River, we were able to travel through parkland on several miles of paved trails and even went though our second bicycle roundabout!  (The other one is in Madison, WI.)    After crossing the Missouri, we then followed the Katy Trail for 25 miles and planned to hotel it for the night at a Super 8 in Washington, MO back across the Missouri River instead of c...

Spent much of the day helping our daughter do yard work--digging up sod for a garden, digging out some unwanted plants and sanding & painting lawn furniture. Jim rode to Menards and picked up a plant, paint and a cement paver on his bike.  Distance 3 miles. We also had fun keeping Phoebe the puppy occupied, teaching her to sit and taking her for walks. (and tiring her out so she would sleep better!) The 4 of us ate at an amazing Chinese restaurant  that had some dishes on the menu with more unusual ingredients such as tripe (intestines), kidneys, chicken feet and even had a soup made with duck blood.  We had beef, lamb, seafood and shrimp dishes that were very tasty.    Phoebe wonder puppy and yard we worked in.

  We made it!   Logistics were taken care of as far as bike prep and packing and this morning left about  6:15 to pedal down to the train station.   This was a chilly trip in the 37 degree air! When we arrived, we were grateful to see that a couple of friends came to see us off. The train was on time and we got our bikes on the train successfully with us handing them up to the conductors.   Later on when our tickets were checked,  the conductor noticed that we only had one bike reservation not two. We explained that when we booked our trip, we found out that there was only one reservation available no matter what day we selected. At first we thought that someone had already booked the available spots.  But the agent checked every day out into July--each day, only one!  However for the return trip there were 3 reservations available each day. So Kay went down to the station early the next morning to meet the train. S...

Something that we have never done is try Amtrak's "roll your bike on the train" option.  With a reservation, you can get on the train with your bicycle, get to your destination and roll it off again and away you go.  We could not do this with our recumbent bicycles as it only applies to standard bikes.  So we have been riding our road bikes to give this a try. If this goes well, then this opens up a lot of options to travel to different parts of the country and take a ride. Our plan is to take the train to St Louis, visit our daughter and son-in-law there, then leave from their house and travel to Fort Madison, Iowa, using Adventure Cycling's Great Rivers route maps for the most part.  In Fort Madison, we will catch the train and return home.   Kay & Jim on train