Kiki Bikes Across America

Wednesday, June 17th – St. Mary, MO to Kyle’s Campground, MO

Today would fall into the worst day of the trip thus far. I got up at 7:30, packed up and the guys went to get breakfast. I decided to cook oatmeal and add some fresh dates to it which was yummy. We finally departed about 10:30 after stocking up on gatorade/powerade at the gas station. It was blazing hot already – probably 90-95 by 10:30 in the morning and it was only going to be like that ALL day long. It was miserable and we had lots of hills (which normally probably wouldn’t be so bad), but since the heat they were even worse. We biked SLOWLY the entire day and the day dragged on and on with the heat. We were drinking like fish and having to replenish often. We stopped at someone’s house to see about getting water – they weren’t home. So we helped ourselves and filled up our bottles and they had a sprinkler out in the yard, so we all cooled off with that for a little bit. It was refreshing for about 0.3 seconds and then we were hot again and sweating like crazy.

It’s bad when you sweat all day long and you still don’t have to pee – no matter how much you’re drinking. I felt like I sweat every ounce of liquid out of my body – it was awful. I felt drained from the heat… this was our worst day of heat and hills (hills not nearly as bad as previous ones, but the heat combined made me crawl up them). We’re in the Ozarks now and tomorrow will be even worse as far as the hills are concerned – more ups and downs and some steep(ish) climbs.

About 23 miles into the day, we stopped at this brewery along the road/route and the guys (Michael and Colllin – the JMU guys) were there. They were sampling beer. We just went in for some cool air and to find some food but they didn’t have much. Chris had a sandwich, George had a salad. I had a cold sunkist and a bag of Mama Zuma’s red hot firey chips (by Route 11)…they were firey alright. We then rolled out about an hour or more later… finally got to Farmington, around 10-12 miles further down the road. We stopped at Hunt’s Dairy bar and got milkshakes. I had a raspberry milkshake (really good), George had peanut butter cup, and Chris had a strawberry shake. That may been the highlight of the day. We called the campgrounds and found out Johnson Shut-ins wasn’t open for camping (renovations or something going on), and so we were going to Kyle’s campground about 5 miles before Johnson Shut-ins.

George camped out on top of the shelter.

We kept on going in the heat and finally arrived to the campground after lots of climbing but ending the day with about 5 miles of downhill, which was nice… we got there just about 8pm, I think… set up camp, showered with cold-outdoor showers (but they were nice and refreshing!) and a frog joined me in my side of the shower… he couldn’t find his way out. LOL. We went into the bar (nice and smoky…yuck) and ordered food. I just got a 12″ pizza (the kind you buy at the grocery store frozen) … they just throw them in the oven and charge you $7… haha. Whatever, it was tasty and I ate all but one piece, that’s how hungry I was. Finally went to sleep around 10:30, because they had to heat each of our meals individually because they only have one oven apparently.

Our shower facilities

Tomorrow’s going to be another super hot day!

GPS Stats:
69.9 miles
06:23 moving time
10.9 avg speed
37.7 mav speed

Computer Stats:
71.60 miles
06:23:45
11.2 avg speed
38.5 max speed

Snake count: 6
Dog chases: 0