Today looked like it was going to be a repeat of yesterday and the day before, at least weather wise. It started out that way as we headed on the 81 North.
Temperatures were 22C when we left Scott City at 8:30 a.m. There was a strange cloud cover that was circular…almost perfectly circular with a few clouds trapped beneath it. One that looked like it had a bit of rain. The wind started out not as bad as the previous days but as the temperatures rose, so did the wind. Again because we were headed north, the wind was mostly at our back, at least for a little while as we crossed into Nebraska….a new state for both Larry and I to add to our list of places we have ridden through. Here we got a little bit of rain…maybe a couple of drops but not even enough to wet your whistle.
Before we left Kansas we saw more of the rolling hills that many of the folks from this state have been telling us about. Still lots of open pastures and agricultural fields but definitely not as flat as we originally thought, but most definitely as windy as we thought.
Nebraska was very interesting although we didn’t stay long here….we were just passing through on our way to Missouri.
Now we have seen a lot of wind and solar farms along our travel but Nebraska, you could see windmills as far as the eye could travel….over every hill or turn (and yes we finally got some really nice ones), it seemed as though every farm was a windmill farm…it even seemed as though we were riding between the rows of them, there were that many. As we were now headed east you must know by now that, yes we were riding sideways in the wind….I understand why so many windmills.
We entered Missouri at noon by crossing the bridge over the Missouri River. The actual state line is halfway across the bridge but fortunately for us, the welcome sign was on the other side and we were able to take a quick photo. The good news is the wind died down some. The bad news was the heat didn’t. By 11:30 am just before crossing into Missouri, the temperatures were now at 33/34C. In three hours it had risen 11C and frankly the temps reached 32 long before 11:30 am.
The heat was so intense we actually stopped more than a few times to hydrate and just get some relief…there were not many bathroom breaks as we were obviously “pisspiring” taking care of two body functions at the same time. We finally arrived at the hotel in Bethany at 2:30 pm, checked in, unloaded the bikes, dropped our stuff in the room, got on our bathing suits and headed for the pool…..this is what we do when we need to get the core body temperature down to a more comfortable situation.
Tonight we rest, tomorrow is a shorter ride so we are hoping to have more time at the other end to further plan our next routes. We are getting closer to home. Most of the roads we will soon encounter will be familiar to us as we have travelled the east coast and New England states a fair bit….there are a couple of things that we haven’t done along that way, so we may look to include them on this trip through. By the looks of it all we should be back home by mid October as we planned. Hoping the great weather they are getting now holds up until we get there.
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