Yelp

The day started about like it ended by crossing the Missouri. I think Mike might have been a little miffed already because I keep picking hotels that are four or five miles from the trail. I’m not sure why he doesn’t like the extra miles after 70 or 80 mile day. Besides, all of the major cities seem to be on the north side of Missouri while the trail is on the south.

Yes, it might be more of the same. However the same is really pleasant and beautiful. Today was a lot of flood plain riding with Dolomite cliffs rising up to our left from the floodplain.

The Missouri River was off to our right and continues to be amazingly large. I also noticed a lot of swirls and even areas where the water seems to be flowing back Upstream. There’s tons of deadwood. It makes me think of Tom Sawyer stories of the boats on the Mississippi. There are tugboats and barges on this River and I suspect it’s more complicated to navigate then it might appear.

This stretch was particularly deserted. We only ran into maybe two other riders in many miles of trail. We did run into this giant fellow crossing the trail. He was not friendly. It turned out to be a snapping turtle and apparently in the water they’re quite docile, but on land they defend themselves. At one point, he actually leaped up at least the front of his body and snapped at Mike. Needless to say, we did not help him across the road.

The day ended like it started. Again, we crossed the Missouri from South to north. As you can see, it was very late in the day but incredibly beautiful. This time I picked a motel about 7 miles from the trail in Washington so Mike was particularly thrilled. To top it off, after riding through town the hotel was at the top of the hill. Then to add misery to injury , the reservation I had made for Mike was on the day before , whoops. Thankfully I found the last room at a nearby Motel 8 and was able to get myself over there cautiously taking the back roads with my lights on. Mike tells me he’s not going to leave a very good Yelp review for me, so perhaps this is the last time I’ll be guiding a trip:-).