Saturday, July 11, 2009
Day 26: Clinton, MO to Nevada, MO
Despite having paid a little more than we were accustomed to last night, we still got a bad breakfast this morning. Nothing unusual, but nothing hot, either.
By reading some travel brochures we learned that Clinton has one of the largest town squares in Missouri. Naturally, we had to see it. Fortuantely, there was even a bike shop not too far away, so we'd be able to search for my helmet and look for some tubes.
The bike shop in Clinton is a little different. It's technically called the Clinton Mower and Saw Shop.
But the owner knows more than just a little bit about bicycles. We chatted with him quite a while about bikes, and he helped us plan our route to Nevada. Although I didn't see a helmet I was interested in, we were able to procure a few tubes, and the advice was invaluable. Rather than take the busy route through Osceola and El Dorado Springs, we would ride the scarcely populated route through Appleton City. We started with an awesome ride out MO-18, before turning down highway K, which was just plain old empty. Empty got to be a theme of the day. Jillian really wanted to stop at a bathroom, but the one we passed around the Montrose Conservation Area was... unpleasant. We rode on to a Casey's General Store in Montrose.
At a number of times on our trip we've though of it was a tour of the gas stations of the country. Gas stations have a distinct hierarchy. Sheetz are way up at the top, since they're usually clean and always have a good selection of food. Casey's are toward the top as well (As are all the Turkey Hill affiliated stores we'd see where we least expected them). Casey's usually have a pizza joint, a gas station, a video rental, and a convenience store all wrapped into one, small store. There's usually a bulletin board where you can read about the local news. Plus sometimes the bathrooms are decorated by someone other than a corporate drone. At least one bathroom even had a plant.
We were also passed by an interesting arrangement outside Montrose.
Leaving Montrose we rode to Appleton City, where they were having a car show. After chatting with a few folks, we stopped for lunch at Dariburg Sandwiches. It was like stepping back in time to a much quieter place. Service was friendly, it almost felt like you were stopping by Grandma's for lunch.
From Appleton City we followed a few more letter highways toward Rich Hill. The road got very empty, and very flat. Jillian started to go insane. When things get boring I tend to kind of zone out and just keep pedaling along. Jillian starts to go crazy if there's nothing to look at and nothing to do. This is understandable - she can't even steer, after all. She's almost always in the mood to play some sort of game, such as Ghost. I'm never in the mood to play a game. It's taken a lot of experimenting, but today we finally found something we can both agree on doing. We played the A-Z game. I would try to tell a story about a friend whose name started with an A, and then she'd do B, and I'd do C, and so on. After we made it all the way through the alphabet, we switched and did the opposite letters. Then we told a story about every teacher we'd ever had, from Kindergarten to the end of high school. Then we told a Brian Reagen joke for every letter of the alphabet. Eventually we made it to Rich Hill, and it's oasis gas station.
It's a straight shot down highway 71 to Nevada (pronounced Na-vay-dah) from Rich Hill. Unfortunately, 71 is a limited access highway, and while it's legal for cyclists to ride (so far as we can tell), I hate riding on limited access highways. But we tried it anyway, since we didn't really see any other choices. It was awful. None of the bridges had shoulders, so we'd try to carefully time our assault on a bridge to when there seemed to be no cars coming. The cars were loud, so we couldn't talk. There was debris on the shoulder. It wasn't long before we had a flat, which we fixed at an intersection.
There were some horses in a field at the intersection and some kids were out playing in the field with the horses. It wasn't too long before they came over to talk. I was sure to ask about the road they lived on, and where it went, since the Garmin showed it as an alternative route. Unfortunately the 7 year old mind doesn't think about roads quite as clearly as adults do, and we wound up riding on some very unpleasant dirt - even if it was fun that the kid tried to race us on his bike for a few hundred yards.
Midway on our dirt ride we came across some very quiet dogs. Dogs that bark don't scare me. But dogs that are quiet and stare at you scare me quite a bit. We'd heard a lot of horror stories about dogs in Missouri. Fortunately we were able to slide away without incident by simply getting off the bike and walking slowly away. Bad choice getting off 71 though.
Eventually we found our way to Nevada, and had a nice ride through a cute old town to get to a Super 8 on the outside of town. The clerk informed us that there was no Internet, since the tornadoes up in Clinton (!!!!!) had taken a few things out. We grabbed dinner at a quiet Subway, impressed the sandwich artist with the story of our trip, and then settled in for a quiet, restful night.
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