Day 44, 7-12-07, Summersville to Centerville, MO, 61.8 miles

This is the steepest hardest part of the Ozarks yet! Now I know why people say Missouri loves company! We passed a family from Australia who are cycling from LA to NY. They had two boys about 9 and 12. I was glad that I'm "cheating" and not carrying my stuff. It was pretty, but I'm glad it's done. We found a nice place to eat food in Centerville after the ride. They're cheeseburgers were amazing and they had sassy sayings all over the wall.

Day 43, 7-11-07, Marshfield, MO to Summersville, MO, 89.4 miles

4040 feet of climbing, which is a conservative number. The weather was nice, it wasn't too muggy and stayed in the 80s for the first time in a while. The trees are nice to have for shade. More steep hills, we SAGed to Alley Spring which is in the Ozark National Park Scenic Riverways (or whatever the Ozarks are technically called). It was beautiful.

Day 42, 7/10/07, Pennsboro, MO to Marshfield, MO, 61.3 miles

Up and Down! I guess we're entering the Ozark region. Every cyclist heading west we've spoken to has described the Ozarks as very hard and hilly, with the hills too steep, too long and too spaced out to use the downs to help you up the next hill. It was the toughest riding we've faced in over three weeks. Several dogs ran out at us, and scared the bejesus out of me, they run right at you and all I can think to do is sprint away.

Day 41, 7/9/07, Fort Scott, KS to Pennsboro, Missouri, 90.4 miles

WE're not in Kansas anymore! We got back on route right outside Pittsburg, KS and stayed on the route to Pennsboro, Missouri. The farther east into Missouri we got the steeper the "rolling" hills became. It is definitely changing from Western Kansas. The day was hot and muggy, but it's nice to enter a new state, slowly but surely, we're moving east!

Day 40, 7/8/07, Eureka, KS to Fort Scott, KS, 81.7 miles

We ventured off route today due to some flooding of some areas of the route and eastern KS in general. This detour definitely added more miles to the day, but we avoided much of the flooding. I did smell plenty of sour corn that had been soured due to flooding. We saw lots of turtles crossing the road today, I wanted to help them not get squished but Skip told me I'd get Salmonella if I touched them...

Day39, 7/7/07 Newton, KS to Eureka, KS 78.8 miles

More corn, very warm, glad we got another early start. I caught a nice sunrise this morning. More cornfields and in the cornfields are oil wells, it's very odd, I tried to take a picture of the wells next to the corn but it was bad lighting and the bugs were eating us alive. We met several cyclists today that were doing an assortment of tours. One happened to be from Penacook, NH, he had ridden from NH to VA and is basically doing the same route as us, but from East to West. I'm at a library in Eureka right now updating my blog, I'm not sure how long it'll be until we have internet access again. It's much harder since we hit Kansas to even find a place to stay at night and internet may be very hard to find in the next 2.5 to 3 weeks. But keep on checking and I'll update when possible. Hope everyone is having a great summer.

Day 38, Nickerson, KS to Newton, KS, 49 miles

Today was our "rest day". We were going to have a nice full rest day, but we didn't really like the idea of not riding, so instead we decided to change our next two full mileage days into three easier days, thereby using up the day we "gained". And having a floating rest day somewhere, probably in the Ozarks. We got almost out of Nickerson and saw a bunch of camels and a zebra and two mini donkeys. It was very strange, but very cool. We finished around lunch time, went food shopping, ate, parked, rested then went to a laundrymat-the usual "rest" day activities. It was a strange RV park, basically some lots owne by a Propane company.