Mud and motel wtih a hose April 26

  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 camp due to the weather report.  
  At one of the trailhead shelters where we were taking a break, we met Isaiah Maxi from Kansas City who was hiking across Missouri. He told us he tries to have at least one adventure yearly (his adventures can be found on  Facebook).
  We previously bicycled the Katy in the fall of 2020, so remembered how we could get dust on our bikes and gear from its crushed limestone surface and hoped that with the rain last night that would be less likely. However, after a number of miles it started to rain on and off, and then became quite steady. Thankfully the surface of the trail stayed firm to ride on for the most part. However instead of dust, our tires flung up "wet dust" on us that clung tenaciously and left a white coating  wherever it landed. When we got to our hotel, we were very thankful that it had an outdoor faucet with a hose attached that they let us use to wash off our bikes.  Even with a good rinsing, there were still bits of the trail clinging here and there!
  Very conveniently for rainy weather, a Dairy Queen was adjacent to the hotel, so we enjoyed double deluxe cheeseburgers and a brownie batter blizzard for dinner. Mm-mm good!
Kay's bike rack 1/2" of mud got flung up on it and she had a streak 1/2 way up her back 

Mud made a mess and hard on chains 

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