Day 35 - Summersville, MO

one part of the camping experiences i have been enjoying is the opportunity to make coffee each morning. i brought a small Coleman stove and coffee percolator, so morning coffee has been a regular treat. just can't beat it ! i have also gotten into the habit of making oatmeal for breakfast; just heat up some hot water and BAM, hot breakfast to get the day going. simple pleasures !!

another pretty weather day today; i have been really blessed with good weather on this trip, with just a couple of exceptions in Tennessee and E'town, IL. the day's ride started serenely enough, but that changed quickly as we entered the Ozarks. the purported brutal hills rose up quickly, so the day was replete with long and much steeper climbs than i'd seen thus far. somewhat surprisingly, i got thru these climbs better than i expected, coming from pancake flat houston. as always, climbs get rewarded with nice fast descents ! druing the day, we stopped at Alley Spring, a very pretty area where we bumped into some locals who were spending a few days on their motorcycles riding throughout Missouri. they offered a welcome beer to dana and i as we visited this pretty spring and stream. even though the signs said 'No wading', i couldn't help myself and took a quick and refreshing dunk in the clear cold water !! moving on from there, we continued the relentless ups and downs until we reached our target of Summersville, MO. as it turned out, the purportedly available camping services weren't; the youth center was closed, and the proprieter wasn't very friendly or helpful. the city 'park' was unavailable, so we began to look for something more primitive/stealthy. while looking for somewhere to pitch tents, we found that finding an outdoor spigot to do some rudimentary cleaning up was not to be until we found a hose out in the back of a bank parking lot. this was a pretty dead little town, so dana and i helped ourselves to the only flowing water we could find and took our versions of showers, trying to be inconspicuous ! take what you can find ! another cold but welcome shower to clean up and was good to go. made camp behind a local church before walking to a nearby restaurant for dinner. got back only to find that a nearby timed outdoor light had come on, which wasn't so bad, but the horrific BUZZING coming from the light was unacceptable. ended up moving the camp into the backyard of an abandoned home not far away, so all ended up fine. have to say that there weren't many redeeming qualities about summersville !

really enjoyed the tough but navigable Ozarks today ! not a long ride, but a tough one !

today: 51
to date: 1855