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!
When we returned to the bike shop – they told us about the broken shifter, and that they were looking to find one for us. We spent the next couple of hours there, chatting with Justin and Landon, the two bike mechanics, about bicycling across the US, about bike adventures and biking locally, and just about bicycles and adventures in general, while they worked on the bikes. We had a local guy join in the conversation with us, and the time passed really quickly. Knowing that we were starting the Ozarks the next day, we were incredibly grateful to have the bikes in great condition before we started. We got great service, the company was great, and we got great prices. We’d love to go back and see them again, and maybe we will when we look into more investing opportunities there in Grand Rivers.
Given that it was 3:30 before we left, and that the heat wave was actually increasing in intensity, we opted to have Alex drive us over the next section, hoping that we could get cooler weather. We crossed the short distance remaining in Kentucky and crossed the Ohio River via ferry into Illinois at Cave In Rock. That was great fun – very simple and low key. Cave In Rock was fun – we took the time to get out and hike around and actually see the cave itself, read the signs, and see the views. We still had to find a campground, and that took another hour or so. We ended up at a state campground – chemical toilets, no lights, no water, but we were the only ones in the entire campground – and we had a view overlooking Golaconda Marina. It was much too late to cook on the camp stove, so we went exploring Golaconda – where nearly everything was shut up tightly by 6:30 at night. We were directed to a place back toward the campground, and ended up having some of the best meals of our entire trip! For the whole first hour we were the only ones in the place, and then a few locals started trickling in. We will do a quick restaurant review one of these days. 🙂 Suffice it to say that we would love to eat there again! And the best part is that the prices in these places are so reasonable that it’s just heaven!