After eating the M-Star’s continental breakfast, I was off at just before 7:00 AM. The trip through town along MO18 was uneventful. In fact nearly the whole day went according to plan. At the intersection of MO18 and BB, after 23 miles of riding through the rolling Missouri countryside, there was a soda machine outside a building. I bought a soda and noticed an OPEN sign illuminated in the window. I looked in and could see a man and small boy sitting at a table. I tried the door and it was unlocked. It turned out to be a small café. It was about 9:00 AM and they were serving breakfast so I had eggs and pancakes. The food was excellent and reasonably priced. Pretty cool for in the middle of nowhere. A couple of motorcycle riders also came in and during our discussion they informed me that there was bridge construction on my route and suggested how to best get around it. I took their advice and rode the rural highways around the construction. About six miles down the road from the café, while I was riding along looking at some lawn statues (cow pulling a covered wagon), I looked up I saw another fully-loaded bicyclist coming the other direction. Evan was his name and he is from Kansas City. He left Kansas City yesterday for Clinton where he will ride the Katy Trail to its east end in St. Charles. He has a friend in Jefferson City who will ride from there the rest of the way. Good luck Evan. I arrived at Amaret which is only about four miles from the MO/KS border at around 1:30 PM. There was an older (84) gentleman and his daughter looking around town. He has two daughters, one in Kansas City and one in Asheville, NC. He is visiting the daughter in KC and was showing her a home that his grandfather used to own and that she’d never seen. It’s great to see fathers and daughters doing things together at that stage in life. Amoret is very small but had a convenience store where I sat and drank a Gatorade and ate a package of Cheetos. That was pretty much my lunch for today. A few miles past Amoret was the MO/KS state line, then US69 which I rode for about six miles to the Pleasanton exit. US69 had a very wide paved shoulder and not much traffic - a pretty pleasant ride.
My first stop in Pleasanton was the Phillips 66 station for a 32 oz. soft drink. There were two fully loaded bikes out front when I pulled up but I never saw either rider and they were gone when I came out. I called City Hall and found out they had not read the e-mail I sent last night requesting permission to camp somewhere in town. Nancy is the City Clerk and after explaining to her that I only needed a patch of ground for the night she said to camp at the West Lake city park. I picked a nice shade tree to camp under and took a short nap. The park was very quiet and hardly anyone was around. I checked the weather and there is a 50% chance of a thunderstorm around 3:00 AM tomorrow morning. These don’t bother me except for packing up a wet tent. I have a few things to snack on so I think I’ll skip riding into town for dinner. There are no showers and no working water faucet so I used some wet-naps to clean the grime off.
I have to ride back through town tomorrow on my way south and west and will get something to eat for breakfast before heading down the road. Tomorrow is 71 miles to Chanute, KS and the connection with the TransAmerica route. I’m looking forward to getting back on an established route with maps. However, I have to say that the drivers today were excellent. Many of the hills had limited distance sight at the top and without exception drivers slowed down to my pace until they could see if there was oncoming traffic. There are only two photos of note today; the western Missouri countryside and the Welcome to Kansas sign.
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| Western Missouri countryside |
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| Fred reaches Kansas |
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