I started out this very nice morning good and early, got 5km and had to turn around for my water bottles still chilling in the refrigerator in the motel room. I soon became apparent I was no longer in hillbilly Missouri. Eureka is the outer boundary of the St. Louis suburbs. I had a few climbs in fancy neighborhoods and soon started seeing cyclists and bicycle lanes. The cyclists were just people out for a ride ... quite a few considering it is Friday. Maybe they were getting a jump on the long weekend.
It all felt so civilized. I stopped for some donuts. They were huge and even more than I could eat at one time ... I only ate two.
When I got to the city limits I was required to take a photo ...
St. Louis would have been pretty easy. Straight shot to the river, follow the riverfront trail. Except, just after the arch the riverfront trail vanished. It was on all my maps but it disappeared. I got on some really industrial parallel roads with a lot of truck traffic and debris in the road. I'm amazed I got through it without a flat. After a few miles of that I saw some "Bike St. Louis" signs that took be to the trail.
The trail was good and it took me over a non-motorized traffic bridge. I crossed the Mississippi River! It might have been to old Route 66 bridge ... I never stop to read the signs. Route 66 was the theme today. They spent a lot of money on signage for it but didn't bother resurfacing the road. Missouri had some Route 66 stuff but everything in Illinois is named Route 66.
A lot of times you see two signs for Route 66 with years active ... 1930-1940 or 1940- 1977 ... the second ones are better for bikes. The older ones tend to be pretty rough.
A lot of the route today was on bike trails that were formerly railroad tracks. These were pretty nice to ride. I guess there were the railroads first, then Route 66 used the same corridors and then the Interstates used the same ones again.
On the bike path I was getting kind of hungry and there is not much visible when I smelled BarBQ. Just above the trail was a plaza with a BarBQ place. That hit the spot.
After lunch I started to get some headwinds and going over 20km/h was a lot of work. The last bit was one of those times when you don't feel you are getting anywhere and it is taking a long time.
Why did you order 3kg of doughnuts?
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