A challenging but enjoyable day.
We mostly walked our bike out the 1 mile (billed as 1/4 mile) gravel road from the Running Spring Farm to the paved road, and started east. The entire day's riding was up and down very sharp little hills. Innumerable 10% grades; even one 14%. We can just barely move on that steep a road, and if any of the hills were not short we would be cooked. As it was, we got over all of them, didn't have to walk any of them or stop to rest. Sandy remarked late in the day, "We're climbing hills I didn't think we could do!"
We stopped after a few miles for breakfast in Ash Grove, then for coffee at Walnut Grove, then for lunch at Fair Grove. All of them have their charms, but the central business districts were corpses. The pic below is Walnut Grove, but it could be any of hundreds of very small towns we've passed through. It's not a matter of WalMart sucking up all the retail business in a town. These towns have little or nothing instead of the dead 19th century main street. The lucky ones have a convenience store and an Ace Hardware on the outskirts. Pretty sad, but that's the situation. This whole trip has been a surprise to us in that way. It is routed through the empty quarter of every state we've visited, in order to take us on roads safe for cycling. But it has also given us a picture of rural America very different from what you see out the window at 70 mph on an Interstate. The people, however, are like people everywhere. Making the best of things, and finding ways to have fun. Along the Trans Am cycling trail, many place keep log books for cyclists passing through, and everyone is interested in our story.
Although the riding was hard today, we enjoyed it. Maybe we'll feel sick of it after a few hundred miles, but the terrain is very pretty: hardwood forests, small farms, and endless little hills to challenge us. Always something happening, and many small victories.
Marshfield is at an Interstate exit, with all the fast food and other familiar Americana you might imagine. We're staying at a Holiday Inn Express. We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant next door, and the cook either committed an error or a crime: I had the worst burn from spicy food ever, even including our trip to Thailand. But I got over it, there's a baseball game on TV, and all is well. Safely rest.
Today ends our eighth week of the trip, having logged 2712 miles, and 91236 feet of climbing..
Riding through much of rural America through those towns and villages that aren't near an interstate or that don't have an economic pipeline to the rest of the country is really sobering. I wonder what this part of America will be like in another 50 years. In our own travels internationally it seems that some countries/cultures handle this better than we do - maybe the social structure makes it easier for people stay in their hometowns more. In Germany nearly every town we went through was clean and well maintained, most had a tower with a clock that kept real time. Of course many of the towns have been around for 1000 years or more so they have some tradition and depth that a lot of rural America, particularly in the west, doesn't have.
ReplyDeleteThe transition from the flat, windy plains of Kansas to the steep hills of Missouri is a bit of a shock but it sounds like you guys are actually enjoying the change of pace and the challenge. Lugging a tandem (with touring gear) up a 14% grade is something many tandem couples would not be able to accomplish. I'm impressed.
Just a final thought on desolate rural small towns - what about Detroit?
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