Coast to Coast 2022 Adventure Day 29: Mountain View, MO to Dexter, MO

This post is part of a series detailing my 2022 coast to coast cycling adventure.

Much friendlier weather made for a more pleasent ride today. Mechanical and medical issues left little time for dinner.

Day 29 Highlights:

Song of the day: Swallowtail by Wolf Alice
Start: Mountain View, MO
End: Dexter, MO
Distance: 110.1 miles
Total Ascent: 4,124 ft.
Breakfast: Hotel potluck
Lunch: Sandwiches a la Sue in Ellsinore, MO
Dinner: Pizza and Mexican takeout

Progress so far: 2,459.9 miles, 81,889 ft. climbed.

The journey so far, with today’s ride in blue

Here are all of the details on today’s ride:

C2C 2022 Day 29: Mountain View, MO to Dexter, MO

Today was basically two rides. The first, before lunch, was on a beautiful country road that paralleled and criss-crossed US 60. The second half was on US 60 and was pretty darn unpleasant. Lots of traffic and really rough shoulders. Especially in Poplar Bluff. But it did get us from Point A to Point B.

The weather today was excellent, considering that we are in the middle of a nasty heat wave. We started off at a very pleasent 72 degrees (at 5:15AM). We had a beautiful sunrise, mild winds, and high temps were only a little over 90.

Sunrise over Missouri

Beautiful Missouri morning, riding on backroads

Not all of US 60 was bad, especially in the early morning. Fun riding the Ozark rolling hills.

So far, Missouri has had more dogs chase us than any other state. No good pictures because I was busy trying (and succeeding) to outrun them. So far it has not really been a problem as most have been friendly and not hell-bent on extracting flesh from our legs.

Missouri also seems to have a pretty robust lumber industry.

We’ve passed at least a half-dozen lumber mills like this in Missouri

I’ve also noticed the sounds of birds chirping, which has been noticabaly absent since somewhere back in Idaho.

This earthmover graveyard was a sight to behold

Today Sue found is a nice shelter at a little league field in Ellsinore for our lunch break.

Beautiful little league baseball complex in Ellsinore

We had a pretty busy afternoon once we arrived in Dexter. Dave’s wrist problems have progressed and he now suspects some kind of nasty insect bite so he hit the local urgent care. He ended up with a steroid and an antibiotic.

Dave’s troubled hand as compared to his good one

I discovered that my rear tire is wearing to the point where you can see the fabric beneath the rubber, despite the fact that it looked fine two days ago. On the other hand, that was 230 miles ago. So, I learned how to change a tubeless tire — my first.

We ended up doing take out pizza (Sue and I) and Mexican (Dave) in the hotel.

Tomorrow we cross the Mississippi!