9-26-2012 (Wednesday) Dover, TN to Waverly, TN

Bicycled 47 miles today
Ride time – 5 hrs 30 minutes
Average – 8.6 mph (do you think there were some hills?)

As of today we are now 1,845 miles from International Falls, Minnesota and 1,385 miles from our home.  We are now ONLY 551 miles from Baton Rouge, LA - 10 or 11 more days of biking and we should be in Baton Rouge!




We left Dover at 7:20AM this morning and bicycled about 2 miles to breakfast at a truck stop type café that had a breakfast buffet with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, fruit,  biscuits and gravy which made for a hardy breakfast good enough to get us through the roller coaster hills promised by our Adventure Cycling maps. There are no other towns on our route for today where we would be able to get anything to eat or drink so we did well by having a buffet breakfast. We filled all our water bottles with iced tea and had an extra 24 oz. can each starting out.

The promise of exhausting roller coaster hills held true but did not disappoint us as with every grueling uphill there was an exhilarating 40 mph down hill with beautiful scenery to be had on every descent. Just as is true in life “a little hard work has its rewards”.



We arrived in Waverly about 2:30 this afternoon and stopped at the local convenience store and ended up each having a huge barbecued turkey drumstick and a 24 oz. beverage.  This was the 4th 24 ounce beverage each for the day.



We are checked in to our hotel in Waverly and figured that we have a day and half of biking before we get on the Natchez Trace trail.  We had planned on being on the Natchez Trace trail on Friday but when I called ahead for reservations at the B&B where we wanted to get on the Natchez Trace trail they were full for the weekend.  So we have to change our plans and our route a little to make sure we have a hotel tomorrow night.

9-25-2012 (Tuesday) Gilbertsville, KY to Dover, TN

51 miles bicycled today
5 hrs 31 minutes riding time
Average speed 9.2


We were lucky to be able to sleep in this morning after watching the disastrous football game last night between the Packers and the Seattle Sea Hawks. That’s one  that is sure to go down in the NFL and Packer record books as being one of the biggest debacles of all times! Disgusting, absolutely disgusting. But I do give Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers a lot of credit for the way they conducted themselves during the after game interviews in lite of the circumstances. To look on the bright side of things, things can only get better for the Packers, they sure can’t get any worse after last night.

Today’s ride took us through the Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area from Grand Rivers, Kentucky to Dover, Tennessee. The LBTL is the strip of land between the Tennessee River,which forms Kentucky Lake, and the Cumberland River, which forms Lake Barkley. Both rivers flow north and empty into the Ohio River which flows southwest and empties into the Mississippi near Paducah, Kentucky. Lake Barkley was formed when the Tennessee Valley Authority built the Barkley dam and flooded the valley to the east of the LBTL in the 1950’s, I think. Of course many people and homes were displaced in the process and there were a lot of hard feelings at the time, a situation very similar to the scenario played out in the movie Deliverance. Route 453 which runs through the LBTL is known as The Trace Road and brings us to within about 100 miles of the Natchez Trace Parkway. Little by little we’re getting there, two more days of hills and we will be on the Natchez Trace and from what we’ve been told it’s all downhill from there. Ya right!



As we were pedaling along today Kathi noticed something laying in the ditch and had me stop the bike.  Here she went back and picked up a Garmin Etrex 20 that someone had lost.  It was in a case and when we got to the hotel one of our plug ins worked and she plugged it in and it is working.  Who knows how long it laid on the side of the road.

The temperature was in the mid 80’s this afternoon and we had about a 10mph headwind so we were certainly glad when we got to our hotel in Dover around 2:30.



Tomorrow our plans are to bicycle to Waverly, Tennessee which is only 42 miles but our map states that the route travels over exhausting roller coaster hills so 42 miles will probably be more than enough for a days ride.

9-24-2012 (Monday) Golconda, ILL to Intersection 24/453 near Gilbertsville, KY

Miles bicycled today – 76 miles
Ride time – 7 hrs. 23 minutes
10.3 mph

Our alarm went off at 5:30AM this morning and we got dressed and loaded the bike and when we opened the motel door we saw that it was extremely foggy outside.  We put on our bike lights and went down town to the local restaurant.  We ended up having breakfast there and sitting and shooting the bull with some of the locals until 8:00AM when the fog finally lifted. 

We had a pretty steep hill to climb out of Golconda but after that we were above the fog bank and it was more rolling hills as we headed northeast to Cave In Rock where we caught a ferry to cross the Ohio River.  The frustrating thing is that after bicycling 47.5 miles we were only about 4 miles away from where we started at 8:00AM this morning but we were on the other side of the Ohio river.

So we headed out on Hwy 146 and went through Elizabethtown and caught the free ferry at Cave In Rock.  We only had to wait 10 or 15 minutes for the ferry that took us over to Kentucky.  We arrived in Kentucky about 11:30 and immediately started pedaling once we got off the ferry.  We had already biked 24.5 miles to the ferry and we still had 51.5 miles to go before we would arrive at our hotel.



We were surprised to see an Amish family waiting on the Kentucky side for the ferry. Made us feel like we were back in Wisconsin!



As we were pedaling along the Kentucky countryside all of a sudden we turned a corner and here were 4 black angus beef on the road staring at us.  As soon as they saw us they took off running and high tailed it down the road and probably ran about 1/2 mile in front of us until they went off into a field.  One of the animals kept turning and looking back at us as if he was saying “What the heck is that”?

Here we are running with the "Beef"!  lol

We stopped in Smithland at a grocery store (all the restaurant’s were closed) and bought a sandwich before we bicycled the last 11.5 miles to our hotel. 



We are very happy with our hotel accommodations this evening.  Yesterday in Golconda we had a very plain motel room with 2 double beds,  no internet, and a TV that didn’t work very well.  Tonight we have a king size bed with a frig, microwave and a whirlpool jet tub.  Boy, that tub felt good after two long days of biking.

Even though we got off to a late start this morning due to fog we arrived at our hotel about 4:45 this afternoon.  This is a lot later in the day than we care to finish up but considering the circumstances it all turned out well.

Tomorrow we will bicycle through the “Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area” in Kentucky and on into Tennessee.  Tennessee will be our 7th state biking in since we left International Falls, Minnesota.

9-23-2012 (Sunday) Cape Girardeau, MO to Golconda, Illinois

Miles biked today 80
Ride time – 6 hr. 56 minutes
11.5 MPH

I know we said it before but we will say it again, what a difference a day makes!



We woke up this morning raring to go at 5:30. It was pitch dark and there were many stars in the sky yet when we left the hotel at 6:00 and stopped at Denny’s for breakfast at 6:10. At 6:45 it’s daylight and we headed out of Cape Girardo across the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge into Illinois. It was rather cool this morning, even by Wisconsin standards, our starting temperature was 40 degrees, so we had on long biking pants and fleece jackets which made for a very refreshing early morning ride. We had seen frost on the roof of a house along the way and the forecast was for all time low temps for the area. As soon as we crossed into Illinois the roads flattened out and we cruised along through the alluvial plain of the Mississippi River for the first 55 miles of today’s ride, what a relief after the Ozarks.



We were so excited to be bicycling on flat land!

In the early morning hours we came across a “Murder” of 20 to 25 crows feasting on fresh possum road kill…..quite a site! They were bound and determined to keep it for their own because they didn’t fly off until we were very close to them.

About 24 miles into our ride we stopped in Tamms for a short break at a convenience store where we saw a bicycle with a BOB parked. We no more than walked through the door than a bearded old timer says, come on in, breakfast is on me. It’s my official job to greet bikers as they come through town. We thanked him for his offer but declined as we already had eaten breakfast but did take him up on a cup of coffee and a soda.

Special thank you to Donn - he welcomed us to Tamms and bought us our morning beverage!

Back on the road again we cruised through the towns of Ullin, Karnak, Boaz, Mermet, and Round Knob before getting into 15 miles of hills again separating the Mississippi River watershed from the Ohio River watershed.



We arrived in Golconda about 2:30 and stopped at the Dairy Bar and Café for a late lunch / early dinner and then checked into lodging for the evening. There are any number of B&B’s in the area but with Labor Day past, they apparently are closed for the season already so we ended up staying at Michael’s Motel. Pretty blah accommodations, but clean and spacious, no internet, no TV, no breakfast, no nothing other than a clean bed and shower.

Today’s route along with clear skies, bright sunshine, comfortable temperatures, good scenery, and a favorable light breeze made for a very pleasant day of biking across southern Illinois.
Tomorrow,  we’ll cross the Ohio River, and look out Kentucky, here we come!

9-22-2012 (Saturday) Cape Girardeau, MO

14 miles biked today
Ride Time 1 hour 38 minutes
Average 8.4MPH


Our decision to take a day off was a good one as we both were feeling half beat to death from all the hills in the Ozarks, and we both agreed we don’t want to push so hard that it’s no longer fun. So this morning we slept in until 7:45, another indication of how tired we were.



After a continental breakfast at the hotel we headed for the laundry mat, got that chore out of the way, and then headed for another bike shop to pick up a Quick release skewer for the BOB and White Lightning for the chains. We stretched our chains a little crunching gears on all the hills so I also adjusted the timing chain and also put a new tube on the BOB. Everything should be good to go again for another 500 miles or so. I hope!  We were talking with the young man at the bike shop and he had stated that other bicyclist that were doing the “Great River Route” have commented that the stretch that we just biked (through the Ozark’s) was harder than doing the Cascade Mountains or the Rockies.  John and I agree with that comment whole heartedly.

After dropping off our clean laundry at the hotel we headed for the riverfront and historic downtown Cape Girardeau where we viewed the murals painted on the downtown  flood wall that was built starting in 1956 and completed in 1964 at a cost of $4 million. It has saved the historic downtown area many times over. The mural depicts many historic events in the area and many of the influential people that helped settle the area and make it into the thriving community it is today. Cape Girardeau has been visited by such people as Mark Twain, Lewis and Clark, Harry S. Truman, John Wesley Powel, and Frank & Jesse James.



We also toured the Old St. Vincent Church that was built in 1853. 



We spent a good share of the afternoon touring the historical downtown area and then went to 4:00PM mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral church in downtown Cape Girardeau. 

Tomorrow morning we will be crossing on the beautiful 3/4 mile long Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge over the Mississippi river and into southern Illinois for the last time.  We plan on starting early as it looks like we are going to need to bike approx. 74 miles to get to our next hotel.

One thing that I wanted to share on this blog was a conversation that I had overheard when we were having breakfast in the little town of Lesterville several days ago.  When John and I walked in there were three men and a lady (all locals) sitting at a table discussing the world problems.  I over heard the lady tell the three men that she had an unexpected visitor at her house last night.  She said she was sleeping in her bedroom that is on the front of her house just off the porch when her motion sensor porch lights came on in the wee hours of the morning.  She said she got out of bed and quietly pulled back the drapes so she could see what was outside and here was a mountain lion pacing back and forth on her front porch like he owned the place.  I don’t know if she was telling this story for the benefit of John and I so we would get out of Dodge or not but it sure made me uneasy as we pedaled out of town.