Day 44 - Salem to Sullivan MO

Jordan, Sarah, and her family were fantastic Warmshowers.org hosts! Warmshowers people are amazingly friendly and welcoming. Jordan & Sarah are new to the Salem area and I'm their first guest there although they have hosted numerous other guests at previous homes. Jordan is mining engineer and Sarah is a nurse.

Chilly again and some mist as I started off this morning.

More trash under a no littering sign.

Another cemetery with lots of flowers.

Bicycle steeds all lined up and ready to go.

Lots of cows today.

And many more lumber mills.

Here is a very big charcoal plant!

Thankfully this nice state highway was completely empty.

Here is a brief video of some cows who ambled along with me for a bit.

Even on this remote road, McDonald's trash is everywhere :-(

Oh no! This state highway pavement ended!

At least this was a nice smooth dirt road.

But then my RideWithGPS recommended route wanted me to take the extremely muddy and puddle strewn road to the right. I elected to stay on the nicer dirt road instead. I do not like riding thru slippery mud with a heavy touring bike.

On the nicer dirt road I did ford a stream but this was easy as there was a bit of pavement at the stream crossing.

It really was a cute creek. Hear it burbling in this short video snippet.

I was so glad to reach clean pavement again shortly after the creek. This alternative route was 10 miles longer but I'm happy with 10 miles of nice pavement instead of 5 miles of rutted slippery mud.

Even more lumber action.

Passed an interesting bicycle mower.

The Country Cafe popped up unexpectedly but I was very hungry at this point.

It does not look like much but the staff were super friendly and lots of neighborly customers dropped in right after I arrived. It is great to meet so many nice folks.

This nice house had some interesting sculptures in front of it. They are a bit hard to see in this photo. Click on the photo to get a larger view.

Many people had bikes in front of their houses. Very promising.

Passed a Painted Lady B&B. Pretty house.

Rejoined Route 66 paralleling Interstate 44.

Passed a vineyard.

Encountered a small murmuration that was fascinating to watch. Just got stills no video unfortunately.

Route 66 lives on.

Saw a big billboard for the world's largest rocking chair.

And it was right on my route at the Fanning Outpost General Store.

Samantha the owner came out to take a picture of me below the huge rocking chair.

Then I got a selfie with her and her popcorn bins. She makes all of her gourmet popcorn on site and I was able to buy some in my own container so spared the life of a poor plastic bag :-)

Outside I met some traveling students from Saudi Arabia.

Later I passed through Cuba!

Lots of great murals and bicycles featured in Cuba!

Missouri has incident bypass routes to assist travelers in finding alternative routes if there is an accident or heavy traffic along two of its major interstate highways. I had never seen these sorts of signs before. Thankfully Route 66 was mostly empty and there were no incidents.

There were train tracks along this portion of my route but not that many trains.

A pleasantly wooded homestead.

A picturesque church.

So happy to see "May Use Full Lane" signs in Bourbon MO.

Shortly thereafter I entered Franklin County. I grew up in Franklin County NY :-)

Met Susan and Leanna at dinner. They were very friendly ladies who really liked my calf muscles :-) and agreed that we need to take better care of our world for our kids. I've now given 81 (!) talks in 44 days.