4200Miles

9/3 Day 42: St. Joe's State Park, MO to Brawley Park, Ellington, MO 66 miles (1811 miles)          Today we finally seemed back in the rhythm of things again. Wake up, strike camp, eat oatmeal (except for Ben who is protesting oatmeal until we we have brown sugar, I think), and ride. We meandered our way out of St. Joe's Park and off into the Missouri wilds up what would be the last road with a shoulder we would ride for days.  Things were only just beginning to become hilly- Ozarky as we have come to refer to it- but only gently for most of the day. We passed small towns, and historic sites or ghost towns that were once towns, with names like Graniteville and Ironton that provided further evidence of the region's mining heritage. We passed quarries and countless fields and I found myself liking Missouri more and more. The people have all been very nice, and the  scenery has started to become intriguing as we've come further west. Hills that roll in...

8/29 Day 37: Eddyville, IL to Cobden, IL 50 miles (1617 miles) Here's Charlie, he's excited to debut on the blog!                Our day off was fairly uneventful, but a nice relief after a week of riding. We also managed to run in to our first fellow long distance cyclist, Charlie Shoemaker. Charlie is from Georgia, isn't too long out of college, and is riding from Albany, GA to San Jose, CA. He's been on the road since Aug. 12, I believe, and had covered about 800 miles or so by the time we met up with him. When we were getting dinner at the Shawnee Restaurant and Lounge in Eddyville, the only restaurant and the only bar in town, Charlie rode up and we were instantly curious. The campground owners, a welcoming couple who live on site with their children, had told Charlie where to find us and figured we would hit it off, being on the same route and around the same age. We pretty much adopted him straight away, inviting him to ride along...

8/24 Day 33: Brandenburg, KY to Hawesville, KY 50 miles (1401 miles)           We had a quick, heavy shower come upon us unexpectedly in the night that forced us to scramble and get the tents under a nearby shelter, but other than this minor interruption we had a very peaceful sleep at the fairground. When we woke, there were signs of the community waking up all around us: a tour bus was loading in the parking lot while we brushed our teeth, cars zoomed by on the nearby state road 79 as we ate our breakfast, and just as we finished packing up our bikes, a couple of men arrived to clean out one of the nearby concession booths-presumably in preparation for some upcoming event on the grounds. The heat and humidity, which had been so merciful the last couple days, seemed to be oozing back into the morning as we set out for the day. By 11, temperatures were already creeping up toward the 100s and by noon it was 105. The day's route had barely any relief from the he...

Thanks to our handi-van ride, riding some long days, some bad estimation on our part, and the realization that the underground railroad maps we have been following are based on historic symbols not geography... We are going to reach the post office a few days earlier than anticipated. We will be probably be there on Monday so if you haven't mailed anything yet please wait. And if you have mailed something please let us know so we can have things forwarded if we arrive before them. Sorry!

8/19 Day 28: Paint Creek State Park, OH to Deer Park, Cincinnati, OH 0 miles             We realized that the UPS truck wasn't going to arrive first thing in the morning to such a rural location, but we still had high hopes when we woke up. As soon as the camp store opened at 9AM, Ben went up to ask about the delivery. They said that normally the truck doesn't arrive til noon or even later some days. While certainly frustrating, this wasn't the worst thing we could have heard, so we went about our morning at a relaxed pace and went up to one of the pavillions by the front of the park to wait. We waited, and waited. The group suggested, around noon or so, that Ben make a phone call to Velocity to see if they had a tracking number for his part, so we could see what the package's status was. He seemed confident that it would be on time, sent an e-mail, and we continued to wait.          Finally, around 1:30 we decided to call Veloci...