Saturday, June 18th:

Today we planned on going to Cabool, MO- about 93 miles through central Missouri. When I went outside to check the temperature, I found a new friend (see pictures). After parting with my new friend, we started our day on Highway 266 East. After our first 20 miles we took a break in the heart of Springfield and grabbed a quick snack for the road. That morning we decided to change our regular route where we dropped down to Highway 66, and instead cut through the farm roads and meet up with our other route 50 miles in. This was working well- until we found that one of the roads we needed to ride down was unpaved. Obviously- we couldn’t ride over the gravel, so we had to do some interesting backtracking to get down to the Highway. However, after that it was smooth sailing until we got our 40 mile break near Fordland. We’ve had some cloud cover all day, and no rain yet, so the temperature is still under 90- barely. Riding in the humid 87 degree weather took some toll on our bodies, but we pushed through to 60 miles where we grabbed some Micky-D’s in Seymour. I don’t know if we were going through an Amish city, or if people just have odd hobbies through here, but we passed many horse-drawn carriages as we rode up the highway (see pictures). Turns out we were right next to an Amish settlement, and we spoke with a few of them when we had lunch. After lunch, we had 40.3 miles to go, so we could have 20 miles- a break- and then ride it in to the hotel. At our break, we actually had a cop pull up and after we told him what we were up to- he just told us that we were crazy, and got on his way. With just 10 miles to go, the heat was overwhelming at a humid 91 degrees. These last 10 miles took us an hour plus some change. After getting into the hotel, we cleaned the bikes and planned some routes for the next few days.