Boy, were we chomping at the bit to get in the saddle … so much so that we missed a turn and rode 11 miles in the wrong direction! That’s the point when you’re glad to have a sag wagon, so you can get back on track with minimal fuss and trauma.
The first part of the ride this day was rolling country roads, and in Boonville:
we picked up the Katy Trail. The Katy Trail is the longest rails-to-trails trail in the U.S., along the line of the former MKT (Missouri-Kansas-Texas) Railroad rail line, which stopped service in 1986. Over half of the MKT line runs along the Missouri River at the base of the bluffs, so the ride is a flat crushed limestone path with trees, bluffs, swamp, and floodplain. There are also several neat steel truss bridges, such as this one further east on the Trail:
We lunched in Rocheport, at a bike shop/cafe along the trail:
We saw lots of flora and charismatic megafauna: horsetail (scouring rush), which has a high silica content and is still used to polish reeds for woodwind instruments; box turtles, terrapins, lots of dragonflies, tiny jumping toads, a bull snake, deer, indigo buntings, bluebirds, …
I rode 61 miles, and they were enjoyable because the road and trail were both beautiful and scenic. However … my road bike is not the best bike for riding the Katy Trail, so by the time we got to Tebbetts, my wrists and my shoulders/trapezius muscles were very sore. I was feeling every vibration in the surface.
That night we stayed in the Turner-Katy Trail Shelter in Tebbetts, a bunkhouse for cyclists right on the trail. It had the most important feature of any overnight stop for a cyclist: a hot shower with great water pressure!
July 7, 2008 at 12:31 pm
As I read, I was thinking “riding on a crushed limestone path . . . hmm.” I love the look of the little bike/food place.