Boy, were we chomping at the bit to get in the saddle ... so much so that we missed a turn and rode 11 miles in the wrong direction! That's the point when you're glad to have a sag wagon, so you can get back on track with minimal fuss and trauma.
The first part of the ride this day was rolling country roads, and in Boonville:
we picked up the Katy Trail. The Katy Trail is the longest rails-to-trails trail in the U.S., along the line of the former MKT (Missouri-Kansas-Texas) Railroad rail line, which stopped service in 1986. Over half of the MKT line runs along the Missouri River at the base of the bluffs, so the ride is a flat crushed limestone path with trees, bluffs, swamp, and floodplain. There are also several neat steel truss bridges, such as this one further east on the Trail:
We lunched in Rocheport, at a bike shop/cafe along the trail:
We saw lots of flora and charismatic megafauna: horsetail (scouring rush), which has a high silica content and is still used to polish reeds for woodwind instruments; box turtles, terrapins, lots of dragonflies, tiny jumping toads, a bull snake, deer, indigo buntings, bluebirds, ...
I rode 61 miles, and they were enjoyable because the road and trail were both beautiful and scenic. However ... my road bike is not the best bike for riding the Katy Trail, so by the time we got to Tebbetts, my wrists and my shoulders/trapezius muscles were very sore. I was feeling every vibration in the surface.
That night we stayed in the Turner-Katy Trail Shelter in Tebbetts, a bunkhouse for cyclists right on the trail. It had the most important feature of any overnight stop for a cyclist: a hot shower with great water pressure!
As I read, I was thinking "riding on a crushed limestone path . . . hmm." I love the look of the little bike/food place.