PowerCycle

04/10 Brrrrr. It was freezing out today. For the first time my poor feet got cold. So here’s what my cold weather footwear consists of: thin wool socks, waterproof socks over those, then my Shimano sandals which are covered by LG Neopren overshoes. I’ll have to add another layer of wool socks over the 1st pair I guess. I can’t be having cold feet all day. At least it didn’t rain but the wind chill was a killer.

Finally made it onto the Katy Trail today. Not sure who maintains this trail but they do a standup job. Not one branch on the trail and everything was well-marked. Riding on the crushed limestone (?) surface wasn’t bad at all. It had been raining on the trail recently so there were a few spots that I had to crank through a little harder but for the most part I cruised along at 12-14 mph which is only 2-3 miles per hour less than I’d be riding on pavement in similar conditions. Saw 2 other cyclists who looked like they were just out for a short ride.

I didn’t stop at the few towns before Augusta but it didn’t look like much was open. The only place I could see open from the trail was a restaurant in Defiance.

Up until today I hadn’t really given a lot of thought to the history of this area and to what the first non-native settlers had to go through. After seeing all the Lewis and Clark markers and now the notes mentioning Daniel Boone I’m starting to appreciate it a lot more. One of the signs said something about L&C having camped at one of the spots along the river only 9 miles from where they’d spent the night before. And here I am complaining about my feet being cold when I did 30 miles on a hard-packed, well-maintained trail (without possibly hostile Indians or British wanting to shoot me).

My plan was to camp a couple towns down the trail but the ACA map shows Augusta having a campground so I headed in since I wasn’t going to get any warmer. Right at the top of the hill that leads up from the trail I spotted the Apple Gate Inn. It looked very clean and well-kept from the outside so I pulled in to see how much it would be for the night. The rates are normal for a B&B and I was going to see if I could find something more in my budget but the owner, Lynne, was very generous and let me stay for a discounted rate. The room is by far the nicest room I’ve stayed in. It has a 4 poster bed, a separate TV/reading room and a sauna. The sauna was on 10 minutes after I got here of course. Lynne owns the place with her husband Bob (who coincidently is supervising the construction work on I-40 in St. Louis–he works for 1 of 3 companies doing the work). They are also 2 of the nicest people I’ve met on my trip so far. They invited me to drive into a nearby town for some German food (and beer) so we all went over and had a great meal (the place was in Dutzow). They wouldn’t even let me pay for dinner! After eating we drove back to their Inn and Lynne baked some cookies and we hung out and chatted for a bit. Breakfast tomorrow morning sounds like its going to be incredible. I would definitely recommend this place to anyone needing a place to stay for the night.

The weather might actually be nice tomorrow so I’m going to get a lot of miles in to make up for slacking off today.

GPX Track

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 12th, 2009 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Leg 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.