Category: 2006 Cycling Across America

  • Jacks Fork (Eminence) MO

    July 26th, 2006

    Yesterday (I’m writing this from Bendavis, MO) Chelsea and I rode absolutely the toughest miles of our trip to date. Things started out great with Alex dropping us off at the highway at Twin Rivers Landing in Lesterville, MO. We were nearly dreading the mileage because of how tough things had been the few days prior, but we were fresh off a great day and a half rest, so we felt optimistic.

    The first 25 miles were great. We had some pretty good hills to climb up, but they were much more gradual, and even though we’d be in our lowest gears, we could just crawl steadily upward. All that changed after we passed Ellington. Wow, did it get tough! We did 48 miles, but it could have been 145, for how tired we were. Both of us were absolutely quivering, by the time we quit, and it took us some time to get our breathing back in shape.

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  • Nearing the end of the Ozarks…Twin Rivers Landing, Lesterville MO

    July 24th, 2006

    Here we are in Missouri, at a private campground in Lesterville, on the Black River, in the Ozarks. Life continues to be an amazing adventure every day. Each day seems to have so much change and so many new events packed into it, that sometimes I feel as though each day is a small lifetime. Some of it is the nomadic existence – never having the same place to call home each night, and needing to hunt and forage daily for food and supplies and resources, and some of it is just the amazing change from day to day and place to place. It’s really hard to believe that 35 or 60 miles can make such a change in environment – in people and weather and scenery.

    We rode to Glover, then stayed at Twin Rivers Landing in Lesterville on Chelsea’s bday, July 24th. The next day was a rest day (July 25th).

  • St Louis MO

    July 20th, 2006

    What an experience we had in St Louis! We knew that there had been a strong storm there the night before, but we had no idea of the severity till after we’d been there awhile. It only took about two hours to get there, and we went straight downtown to get to the famous Arch. We kept seeing debris in the streets, the streetlights were all out and bent at odd angles, and there were massive branches broken. We began to realize that it had to have been the storm the night before. The eerie feeling was compounded by the fact that St. Louis is clearly in the midst of major urban renewal. Block after city block is full of abandoned buildings in terrible condition. Many of them reminded us of the devastation in New Orleans, where the buildings looked like they had had their insides sucked right out.

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  • Rest In Peace Campground, IL, near Cape Girardeau MO

    July 19th, 2006

    Chelsea and I got up and got dressed and got completely ready to go – we took the bikes down ourselves for the first time, had eaten, had our sunscreen on, and were ready to rock and roll. It was taking us a long time to get going, and we finally realized we were absolutely exhausted – the heat was still intense – we had gone to bed at 89 degrees in the tent again, and we had been riding for 7 straight days. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and we had Alex drive the route till the next campground. It was great fun seeing the route, and it was great fun seeing the Illinois countryside. What a change from what we had been seeing! Suddenly it was all farming – and we’re talking big operations too.

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  • Golaconda IL, Rauchfauss Campground

    July 18th, 2006

    We started out with good attitudes on Tuesday the 18th, but it became clear very quickly that Chelsea’s derailleur was not working properly. After struggling up one particularly steep hill, we realized we needed a bike shop, and going back to Grand Rivers was our best bet. Alex picked us up and we went back to the bike shop we had seen the day before. What a wonderful experience it was! Turns out that both Chelsea and I needed new chains and new derailleur cables, and one of Chelsea’s shifters was broken. We left our bikes for a few hours to be fixed, and went to get lunch and send off some packages full of things we don’t need on the trip. It has been seriously great to have the extra space from sending back those items!

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  • Hillman Ferry near Grand Rivers KY

    July 17th, 2006

    The next day was memorable because Chelsea took a tumble only about 30 miles into our ride. We had been climbing, climbing, climbing again, and she looked down to shift, but she was too close to me, and her tire clipped mine. She went down immediately, and I must give her major compliments about how gracefully she fell! She also had the good luck to fall onto a grassy shoulder. She got some nasty road rash, with a big gouge out of her waist, and a twisted ankle. We still went another 6 miles, because we had no signal and couldn’t reach Alex. We were able to ride directly to the campground – Hillman Ferry, in Land Between The Lakes Recreation Area in Kentucky.

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  • Gatlin Campground in Land Between The Lakes KY

    July 16th, 2006

    The next night found us in Gatlin Campground in the Land Between the Lakes Recreation Area in Kentucky. We had expected the ride to smooth out a lot, after the nasty hills of TN, but we found the riding to be just as hard and harder in some ways. We quit after only about 40 miles, as we were really tired and again, the heat was getting to us seriously, after a tough morning of hills. The campground had only one water spigot, and chemical toilets, so it was another night without showers. Again, there was only one other campsite occupied, so we had great privacy, and we had a waterfront spot.

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  • Danville Grill; Kentucky Lake TN

    July 15th, 2006

    The next day we tackled some really, really serious hills in Tennessee, headed towards Kentucky. We ended the day at Kentucky Lake, and couldn’t find a campground anywhere within reasonable distance. On a hunch, we stopped at a small convenience store and grill at the end of a road, near a boat launch, where I asked about camping. It turns out that it is so relaxed there, that people just pop up a tent by the side of the road. They offered the use of their outdoor bathrooms, and the bathrooms even had a shower. We were able to set up our tent just off the road in a shady, amazingly private area, and walk to the store.

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  • Loretta Lynn Campground near Waverly TN

    July 14th, 2006

    The day after I last wrote, we did make it to the Loretta Lynn campground, near Waverly TN, and it was just what you might expect from the name. It had a great swimming pool, where we played around for a while, gratefully (yes, it was still in the high nineties with a heat index hovering around 105), and it had a washer and dryer so we could do our clothes, and showers with hot water. What a treat! The whole camp had a very country/cowboy flavor, with a separate horse camping area, gift shops, tours of her house, a museum, an old mining tour, club house, basketball, a creek that we could wade in, paddleboats, and soda fountain – where we killed time out of the heat by ever so slowly drinking a root beer float and looking at all the food and supplies. The heat was really overwhelming, but we did enjoy the campground (other than the rather large number of flies and mosquitoes, and then huge bugs in the washrooms). We got a spot right next to the creek.

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  • Centerville, TN – 1,356 miles

    July 13, 2006

    We have finally finished the Natchez Trace Parkway, and tomorrow we start the serious roller-coaster hills of Tennessee. Chelsea and I have made good time the last week on our riding days (we took 2 days to catch up on our organizational issues). We have ridden 65-72 days almost every day except today, when we did only 38 miles. But wow, they were some miles! We were extremely tired when we woke up, and it was very hard to get going, and then we hit our steepest hills yet. We had several hills today that were 1-2 miles long, and we had to put it in a low gear and just keep going. We have gotten a lot stronger, and the long slow hills are quite do-able now, but it’s a killer to have steep hills and steep downhills one after the other. That’s what we will be facing the next 4-5 days as we cross the Ozarks. We’ve apparently been in the foothills of the Appalachians the last few days.

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