Day 17 - Mountain View to Mountain Grove, Missouri

Day 17 of our tour
October 20, 2016
41.0 miles today
3109 feet of climbing
(745.1 miles, cumulative)
(26,791 feet of climbing, cumulative)

We stepped out of our room this morning confident that the weather forecast was right. Namely, less than 1% chance of rain. As we looked at the sky and saw dark threatening clouds,and looked at the highway and saw cars and trucks coming from our intended direction with their wipers going, we decided to don the rain gear.

We stepped to the back of the building to get out of the wind as we took 20 minutes to put everything on. When we then got on the bike and rode around the building toward the highway, the clouds were gone, all the wipers were silent, and no rain was in sight! We rode twenty miles all bundled up, and eventually Jean got too warm, while I was absolutely soaking from perspiration and was getting cold under all my layers.

We stopped at a McDonalds that was mostly empty and used two tables and a total of eight chairs to lay everything out that needed to dry. I used the washroom to change into a dry shirt, we had something to eat and a coffee, and headed off again.

The day featured a crosswind and more long sweeping rollers. Here is a photo of a large flag blowing at right angles to our path:

Early in the day we cycled past a large yard at a sawmill full of stacked lumber. The piles went on and on, and some of them looked very old and were starting to topple over. We wondered why it had all been milled, and what would be its ultimate use, or fate:

It was a very cloudy day, and for the most part the fall colors were in the shadows and definitely muted. Just as I was saying to myself that the blog post today would not have any fall tree color pictures, the sun broke through and we came to this display, and had to stop:

At one point after a long steady climb we found ourselves for only a minute or so on a ridge with a view to a far-off horizon. It, too, was worth a stop to get a photo that was in focus:

We did see another very fast-moving yellow truck today, Ross, but it whizzed past us so quickly that I could not get a photo of it for you. But you know shat? We also saw a fast yellow car, and we had our camera out, so here is the photo for you:

One last photo sort of sums up the day. This one shows a long gradual downhill, followed by the final climb to the town of Mountain Grove and our motel for the night:

By the way, the shoulder in the above photo is quite clean and bare. However, during the day, and on previous days, we have cycled past many animals. In order of frequency (just guessing, as I have not actually counted) we've seen armadillos, skunks, coyotes, raccoons, deer, turtles and snakes. None of them were going anywhere, and we've photographed none, either. Back in Cape Girardeau when we mentioned our observation to Jean's brother Paul, he told us the Missouri version of the joke: "Why did the chicken cross the road? To show the armadillo it could be done."

Tomorrow we will reach Springfield, Missouri and rejoin Route 66. Despite our best efforts last night to find a reasonable distance with accommodations, the best we could do was create a route of 64 miles with 2800 projected feet of climbing going all the way into Springfield. We'll be saying goodbye to US 60 at about the 42 mile point.

Something we've noted with Ride With GPS is that their proposed climbing for a route is only about 70% of the actual claiming after we've done the ride and that smartphone app has recorded the ups and downs. So, tomorrow will be a big day for us, with likely 3200 feet of claiming over 66 miles. (We added two miles to the route this evening when we spotted some gravel roads that looked like they might have residents with big dogs. We made a change to stay on paved roads in slightly more civilized neighbourhoods. We hope they'll be, anyway.