75

Monday, August 18, Fairgrounds Campground, Sedalia, Missouri
We had to be at the church this morning at 9:00 to pick up the bikes. The pastor met us and let us in and before we left, a nice lady arrived to give us some of her garden tomatoes and corn. Nice. We rode to Marilyn’s fixit shop, Clinton Mower and Saw Shop, and her son Sam helped us a lot with the bikes, fixing my chain, Vicky’s crank and Willie’s bottle holder, all for almost no charge. Nice people. The kids were at the library while the bikes were being worked on. Adriana updated the blog for August 12 and 13, so you may find those entries more interesting than usual. After the bikes were done, a newspaper man interviewed us at their shop about our trip and wanted us to keep in contact with him when we arrive in Maine. Before beginning the Katy Trail, we stopped at Wendy’s for some filler food. All rode today. The trail was great. I think we saw two or three people the whole way. It was quiet, composed of fine compacted gravel with plenty of room to ride abreast and talk the whole way. So we sang, played games and talked/argued the whole way. It’s always so much fun when all are riding, but especially when we can have the whole trail to ourselves and be sheltered along the way by a shaded tree canopy. We stopped at the trail heads which were marked by a real box car or caboose, and set at the locations of the same rail stops that were formerly used by the old trains. There was historical information at every trail head at each town, which made it interesting. We ended up riding into the night and I hooked up the bikes with headlights. It was the first time the kids and I had ridden at night. Fun. We ended up staying at the town fairground campground and didn’t get to sleep until almost midnight. 46 miles.