top of page
Search
  • rstrandjohnson

Day 41: McKittrick to Defiance, MO

Updated: Jul 27, 2021

Distance: 48 miles

Elevation: the bike trail so not much

Temperatures: high-60s to mid-70s


Planning for an early start, we woke up to thunderstorms! So we had a leisurely breakfast with our B&B host Joey, her husband Rich, and these two guys...one a cyclist traveling from Las \Vegas who had landed in McKittrick and was staying on to see if he liked small town life, and this other town character who was super nice and chatty and had some seriously CRAZY ideas about pasteurization, food intolerances. and local history. Carol was thrilled with breakfast, which Joey made as gluten free as possible. And because we waited, the rain ended and we headed out onto the Katy Trail.




Two nights ago, we heard thunderstorms in Jefferson City. Turns out, those storms had included straight line winds, and we saw the effects on the Katy Trail today. In addition, areas along the trail were still out of power, including our Airbnb, but by the time we arrived in Defiance at 4:30pm, it was on...yay! We realized again how lucky we’ve been on this trip, missing the heat dome over the Pacific NW by a week, the floods on the Missouri 12 days ago, and now these damaging winds.



The ride today was relaxed and lovely, despite the messy trail. (We all apologized to our bikes at some point in the ride...they are SO dirty!). Most of our way followed the river on one side and beautiful bluffs on the left that stretched above us. \We are still following the Lewis and Clark Expedition path, so there are informative historical markers for every place there was a campsite.



We stopped at cute Peer’s Mercantile, and the lovely shopkeeper gave us a great recommendation for lunch at Dutzow. Then we stopped at Augusta, where the bike shop guy GAVE us two tubes. The town is being completely renovated by this super rich real estate mogul who grew up nearby and now owns half of Naples, FL and some town in Colorado. Go figure.




It’s hard to believe that we are biking into St. Louis tomorrow. What an adventure it’s been, shared with the best folks ever!




Highlights:

A relaxed day, biking and sightseeing

No rain!


Lowlights:

Very muddy bikes!

Taking the wrong turn off the trail and adding 7 miles of hard road to get to our Airbnb!

105 views2 comments

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page