Fair Grove, MO

July 23rd Day 24

We left Houston, MO at 10AM, a little later than expected.  Not 10 miles out of Houston we ran into the Biers-Ariel family from David California.  The family of four is biking across the country with a petition to take to Washington, DC with some proposals for the government regarding Global Warming.  Unfortunately we didn't have the chance to speak very long with them as they had not eaten yet that morning and as they said "we usually yack more, but we're hungry and all yacked out after talking with Mike.  (the English guy from Boston that has been riding before and after us for over a week now)  Mikes usually gets out before we do but we always catch him before lunch.  

Maybe 20 miles later we ran into Jeff who was biking from Oregon to Virginia.  Jeff had biked the first 3,000 miles of his journey with his sister but she has just recently left because of obligations somewhere else.  Jeff is a graduate of the University of Maryland and is doing a tree study during his trek.  He basically takes a sampling of trees every so often and as he said "does a lot of technical nerdy science stuff on them."  It was good running in to him as he said he was going to stay at the Horse Creek Inn at Houston and 10 miles back I found I still had the key from our room in my pocket.  Jeff said he would take it back to Pony and Eya.  Check out his site here.  

We had a great lunch in Walnut Grove, MO at "Mom's Family Cafe".  We were the only people there and I had a huge stack of pancakes, Brent, Chicken fingers and fries and both of us had a piece of cherry pie.  "Mom" was definitely in the back cooking and Mike also joined us for a bit at lunch.

Big day of running into people biking the other way.  We ran into Daniel and Nisse, a father and son from Sweden doing the trek from West to East.  They were really nice guys and seemed to be having a great time on their trek.  They warned us that the hills further west in Missouri were pretty rough.  

We huffed it on the last 15 miles to Fair Grove and along the way we ran into "Wiry Mike."  Mike just graduated from college and was on a severe deadline to finish his trip to start his new job as a trauma nurse in Harrisburg, Virginia.  Because of his deadline Mike was averaging between 130-160 miles a day.  WHICH IS INSANE.  He confirmed that the hills got rough further west, and when a guy that's averaging that much mileage in a day said that our ears really perked up.  

We arrived in Fair Grove, MO where we were scheduled to stay at the Historical Society, which we'd heard was a great place to camp.  It was a historical society with 18th century buildings and the society lets cyclists camp there and they unlock the bathrooms (which had a shower) for use.  We had a great dinner at Hill Top Pizza, literally the one restaurant in town.  Cheesecake on a stick finished the meal and then we called it a night.  We had a race to see who could set up their tent fastest at the sun was going down and believe it or not we tied.  Overall, it was an excellent day of riding and the weather was beautiful and cool.   

---