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Friday, August 15, 2008, Super 8 Motel, Butler, Missouri,
Well, we made it to Missouri today, and even though we didn’t ride too many miles, it wasn’t that easy, lots of continual little hills. I woke up and wanted to go fishing. Willie and I started around 7:15 am using the stinky bait with stew meat and boy did it work. Our hooks weren’t the right kind so we would miss lots of bites but we did catch some eventually. I went back to get the rest of the kids so that we could catch more. When I was leaving a park ranger came and said that three of the catfish were under the required length of 15 inches. He ended up telling me to throw the three undersized fish back and didn’t give us a ticket. I was very thankful and began carefully measuring them. Vicky caught the biggest fish right before we left, about 19 inches. We ended up with nine nice-sized ones but we smelt pretty bad from handling the bait, so the kids took cold hose showers at the campsite. It was pretty late by the time we left on our bikes, about 4:00 pm. Vicky couldn’t ride until we fixed her crank. We took back roads, some unpaved, to make it to Butler. We didn’t even see a Welcome to Missouri sign as we entered. The roads were very hilly, but at least they were short hills, not huge mountain passes like we had in the Rockies. We arrived in Butler around 7:30 and eventually decided to stay in our second motel of the trip and watch some of the Olympics, something we all have been wanting to do. We saw Michael Phelps win his 7th gold and saw some women’s gymnastics, diving, track, and beach volleyball. Therefore, it was not a restful evening because we didn’t turn off the TV until almost 3 am. 38 miles.