Day 14 of our tour
October 17, 2016
50.7 miles today
2121 feet of climbing
(619.8 miles, cumulative)
(16152 feet of climbing, cumulative)
Jean's brother Paul gave us a lift with his truck to the outskirts of Cape Girardeau in order to avoid heavy morning traffic. We stopped in a McDonald's parking lot and both the local sheriff (who had been having coffee) and the McDonald's manager came over separately to talk as we were attaching the panniers.
We saw on the news that this was a day of unusual weather in many locales around the nation. For us, it was predicted to be record high temperatures, exceeding 90 Fahrenheit, with winds of 20 mph blowing into our face. In the end, it reached 88 degrees, and the wind did indeed blow. We just found a gear that was the right cadence and effort, and let that dictate our speed, rather than fight the wind.
We are using Ride With GPS (RWGPS) to make our maps, and without it we would be hard pressed on many occasions to find our way. We prepare the maps when we are online, and then we download the maps to our Moto G smartphones for offline use. (We do not have a data plan.)
Unfortunately, RWGPS has three significant shortcomings, in our view. First, it does not show whether a road is paved or gravel. Second, the voice navigation commands are sometimes incorrect, telling us to turn right when in fact the turn needed to be left. And third, the screen is hard to read when looking for alternate routes, as the nearby roads do not appear on screen with adequate contrast to the mapped route.
Today's route was supposed to be 44.6 miles, but we came to one required turn and saw a very long road disappearing almost to the horizon. It was gravel! We altered our course in order to stay on paved roads all day, and in the end we cycled a total of 50.7 miles to do that. In order to figure out the best alternate course, we opened maps.me on the phones, as it has a much more readable screen for finding roads.
One last comment about route making and following is that Google street view does not cover many of the smaller state and county roads here in rural Missouri, so it is useless when we try to see which roads are paved, and which are gravel.
We got a treat when we checked in to the Super 8 here in Poplar Bluff: they serve soup in the evenings. Along with the sandwiches we made this morning, it was enough for supper. We got here at 3:30 and were very tired and hot. We've showered and cooled down, but we don't feel like going out again, and will likely go to bed early.
Here are a few photos from the day. We took fewer, mostly because it took more concentration and energy than usual to cycle in the wind and heat.
We've seen lots of freshly harvested fields like this one, often with a forest behind that is starting to show fall colors, also like this one:
Here is a collection of tractors and other vehicles doing some work in another field:
Some fields have been turning green. We wonder if a winter crop has been planted in those:
Our altered route took us over a dam. This road was typical today, namely, no shoulder. Drivers always moved over, however:
It wasn't just the road over the dam that lacked shoulders. We had miles like these below, too, with long rollers. You can't see the headwind, but it was there:
For a while today we cycled on a road called State Route K. When we passed this sign we knew we needed a photo. K is very important to us!
Tomorrow looks like slightly cooler temperatures, and slightly less wind. We'll see.
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