June 24th - Eminence, MO to Hartville, MO

Mileage: 80 miles
Terrain: Rolling Hills
Temperature: 80 ish degrees
Got up this morning got everything packed up and ready to go. Made some PB&J sandwiches and hit the road. The sky was looking pretty dark and it soon began to rain. Decided that it wasn’t heavy enough to stop and that we should push on, so that we did. It was a rather cold morning so it didn’t mix well with the rain. Soon I was very wet and cold, my feet were sloshing around in my shoes and my finders were starting to prune. Finally, we came to the first town about 20 miles out. I thought to myself, it’s going to be a long day. Sat down at a small diner and had some coffee. Everything was still wet, checked the weather and determined that by noon the rain should be through so decided to wait it out. By 11:30 the rain had mostly subsided so we decided to hit the road!! It turned out to be a glorious day. Things are defiantly starting to flatten out even more so, so I knew that it was not going to be as rough of day as yesterday. Road about 22 miles into a town called Housten and had some Subway for lunch. Then about 2 miles out from Housten there was the second rest stop of the day. It was along this river with a huge rock on the other side that you could jump off of. It was about a 30 foot drop to the water. Everyone was in the water and jumping. I contemplated for a while and then finally decided to do it!! I knew that if I didn’t I would ride away and regret it forever. And I thought to myself, you only live once, so lets live it up!! So I waded to the other side of the river and started climbing up the river bed. There were tons of rocks, it was like you were rock climbing just to get to this jump. Walked along the top of the side of this rock as my adrenaline began pumping!! I thought to myself OMG what have I gotten myself into!! The climb to the jump was rather difficult with all of the rocks and climbing and I thought OMG, I have to jump there is no way that I could make it back the way I came! One of the girls, Brittany was doing it a second time just because I didn’t want to do it alone. So we finally got to the jump!! I made her go first just to see how it was done, well lets just say, it looked a lot further down when you were actually up there!! She went and without much hesitation, I followed. I had no choice there was nothing to debate this was the only way out!! Well, the water felt GREAT!! However, my thighs did not!! I ended up smacking them on the water pretty hard and they were tingling, but I DID IT!! I faced my fear and now can never regret it!! So after cooling off in the river we got back on the bikes with only about 30ish miles to go. Rode on and enjoyed the ride, the terrain was wonderful, some gradual climbs with beautiful scenery. Came to the final water stop of the day which was much needed as I was out of water. We all chilled out there along the side of the road with the trailer in some parking lot in the middle of nowhere and listened to some music and joked around. By this time it was getting late in the afternoon so we moved on to ride the last 13 miles to Hartville, MO where we are staying outside of their courthouse. We were informed that there were no showers however, we did find I spicket and a hose to rinse off in. So I got my environmentally friendly soap put on my swimsuit and got my shower. It felt wonderful!! We joked about how we were in the center of this small town, bathing in a hose in front of the court house. Got my tent set up, took a Tylenol pm as I have many bug bites that kept me awake last night and really need to get my sleep tonight. WOW, I cannot believe that it is only one more day and we will be in Kansas. We are around 1500 miles and in a few days will be half way. What a great trip it has been thus far, not to say that there haven’t been difficult times as well!!