Day 39 - Vinita OK, thru Kansas, to Joplin MO

-
BK and his wife Barbara were excellent couchsurfing hosts. The night before they welcomed me with tons of food at their regular Sunday night potluck with friends. In the morning BK made eggs for me for breakfast.


It was cloudy and 32°F when I departed.


Frosty too.


I was sad to see this pile of junk near the highway.


Here is some nostalgia along Route 66.



Afton, OK has seen better days. All the buildings along its main street are now closed.


I was amazed at the super wide "bike lane" I had along this short section of road.


God, Guns, Guts, and need a Wall.


Historic 66 this morning at least had a wide smooth shoulder and a great tailwind as well. However it was chilly all day with temps mostly below 40°F.


It was very cold in Miami, OK.


Miami had a number of big water towers.


On this ride I have encountered lots of these grates parallel to a bicycle's travel in Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.


Saw lots more road kill skunks, opossums, squirrels, and one poor dog.


Entered Quapaw, OK...


...and ate at Dallas's Dairyette on old Route 66. Good onion rings and fried green beans.



More cows.


And then I entered Kansas.









Hey Dorothy, we aren't in Kansas anymore.


New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and now Missouri have many places to buy fireworks.


Shortly thereafter I arrived in Carl Junction just north of Joplin for my night's warmshowers host.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Ride Around Finland

-
Image
Friday August 2, 2019, Biked 123 km. Warm and partly cloudy all day. Whoa, you probably thought this blog was just about my ride across the US. Well it is focused on that but this ride in Finland was very cool and was an interesting one to compare to my ride across the US, so I decided to make it one of my epilogue blog posts. TLDR: Finland has much better bicycling and transit facilities than any of the cities I visited in the US. On my walk from my hotel to the bike shop where I had a rental bike waiting, the sidewalks were designed for bicyclists and pedestrians.  The had little channels carved in them so the rain gutter water could tidily run into the street. I picked up a beautiful light carbon fiber road bike from Bicyclean Helsinki -- a wonderful and highly recommended bicycle rental shop in Helsinki. Super friendly staff and great bicycles from city bikes to performance mountain and road bikes. Off on the road it was a beautiful day with sun shining off t
Read more

Day 81 - Long Branch NJ to Brooklyn NY

-
Image
Monday May 13, Biked 53 miles. Total mileage by end of day: 4418.  Windy, cold, and light to moderate rain all day. Not much traffic down this coastal highway early in the morning. Pretty high surf like yesterday. Very strong side winds but not as strong as yesterday's. There are many coastal mansions in Monmouth, NJ. All these sea wall stairs are marked as private, no trespassing. In NJ it looks like beaches and coastline can be owned privately unlike CA where all beaches & coastlines must allow public access. A few pretty blooms but probably not native. A view of the beach. My bike on a bike/ped overpass. Soon after my route went down the Henry Hudson Bike Trail. It was wonderful! Although I had to squeeze by some rangers and closed section where a tree had broken and was going to fall sooner or later. Got my ferry ticket. Ernie and Bruce, two of the workers there were very excited about
Read more

Day 46 - Byrnes Mill to St Louis

-
Image
Today it was 60s and 70s all day. It also started with a killer hill with some 15-20% grades. Thankfully there were some 6% sections where I could recover a bit before the next really steep part. This is a photo looking down from the top. It doesn't show the steep parts. Wish I had some pictures of the steep parts but not possible to stop and restart on those sections -- would have had to walk them. Then I did some more reasonable climbing and eventually reached the top where there were water towers. The gradual downhill that followed a ridge was great! These nice homes on the ridge... ....had lots of trash on the other side of the road. :-( Also on the ridge was a large confluence of high voltage power lines. My leather biking gloves wore out with holes and lots of thin spots. Luckily this bike shop had new ones that fit me well. I encountered some excellent trail. And met Wade, a fellow bicyclist. The trail went along a r
Read more