Pat and Sari's Honeymoon Bike Ride

Friday, August 22, 2008
Hermann, MO to Defiance, MO
46 miles (8002 total miles)

Today started out cloudy and threatening; the ground was still wet from a recent drizzle when we left our motel. We stopped for breakfast a couple of blocks away and chatted with two guys from St. Louis who came to Hermann often and were regulars at this restaurant. Another couple of guys came in while we were eating, having checked out our bike first. They had a canoe on top of their van and were going to race it in an annual race from Hermann to the Missouri-Mississippi confluence in St. Louis. They both had tandems as well and were very impressed with ours. We left the restaurant at 7:50, taking a couple more pictures of the quaint buildings in town, and headed back to the Katy Trail. The trail was wetter than it was yesterday, and there was more debris on the trail, including some tree branches. Most of the trail, though, was still in very good shape and we actually made slightly better time today. We passed more fantastic bluffs, creeks, bridges, crops, wetlands, and, of course, the river, as well as a number of little towns. There seemed to be more wetlands today, maybe because of the rain, and we saw a flock of egrets, one heron, and several other smaller birds - even a small group of cardinals! We also saw a few more turtles and lots of little frogs who hopped out of our way as we approached. And we had lots of butterflies, dragonflies and grasshoppers along the trail as well (not to mention scores of mosquitoes). There weren't many historic markers today, but the bulletin boards at the trailheads had some interesting information about the highlights along the trail. There was one write-up on Daniel Boone, who is from this area.

While we saw only 2 fellow travelers yesterday, we had a bumper crop today - we passed at least 24 other bicyclists and 4 walkers, oh, and one guy on an ATV (he lived on a farm along the trail). We met Aaron Waxman near the Marthasville trailhead. He was from DC and was heading to California; he had had a run-in with a car early on his trip which took him 3 weeks to recover from, but he still went on with his trip - that certainly takes guts! We stopped at Marthasville to have lunch together - he had food with him, but we had to go a little ways to find an open restaurant, so we ended up eating there and meeting back up with him later. We had a very pleasant chat with him before going on our way. We met a local guy at the next trail stop, Dutzow, who was heading our way and had gone through a brief shower at Treloar, about 10 miles back. We were surprised because it hadn't been raining at all when we went through there. But the weather today was like that - we ran into a similar shower near the end of the day. We talked with 2 of the guys on foot today - one was an older gent from the Ozarks who was just out for a 4-5 hour walk on the trail. The other was a young guy who was carrying a very heavy pack and was going the entire distance of the trail. We noticed an ATV coming up behind us on one point and pulled off to let him get by. It turned out we pulled off on the road he was about to turn down, so we stopped to chat. He told us about the 1993 flood that had flooded his field from the river over to the foot of the hills on the other side of the trail. He also said that sometimes floods were good because they left a rich silt layer on the fields, but when the floods caused the levees to break, the rush of water usually gouged the land up and left a lot of sand, which was not good. Finally, we passed a local guy on a bike who turned around to ride with us. He joined us around Augusta, the last trailhead we passed today and rode with us the last 7 miles to Defiance. Bob, who was from St. Charles, had lots of interesting stories to tell about his bike trips and about his work for McDonald-Douglas, working on the Mercury space capsules. As we approached Defiance, we found a large tree branch blocking the entire trail; Bob said it hadn't been there 45 minutes ago when he came by this point in the other direction. It appeared that a tree had just split, spilling its branches across the trail. It was lucky no one was there when it happened.

We said goodbye to Bob in Defiance, after stopping for a soda at a bar near the trail. Our motel was a short way off the trail with a restaurant right next door. We arrived at the motel at 4, having gone over 45-1/2 miles in under 5-1/4 bike hours, a little better than yesterday. Tomorrow we'll go another 16 miles on the trail and then head into St. Louis. We were surprised to find, when we updated our route on the web site, that we had actually reached our 8,000 mile mark - we thought we would be just a little short. So tomorrow morning we'll see if we can get our usual celebratory photo taken. Just about 1,000 more miles to go!