Day 27 – July 24, 2003

Beautiful Skies Beautiful Ride

Ride from Branson, Missouri to Jackson Missouri

 

 

I don’t know exactly what happened last night, I guess I was more tired than I thought. We checked in and fell asleep almost as soon as we got in. I was so tired and they cold I seem to be catching just made me want to close my eyes. The next thing I knew, it was today.  Needless to say, I didn’t get this days story and pics uploaded. Well, they are all here today.

 

I didn’t think this day was going to be that great when I got up, but when I broke my shoestring on the same boot twice before I got it on, and these are new strings, I figured I was right. On top of that I am all stuffed up with no cold medicine to help out. So the first thing we did was stop for cold medicine and shoe strings. Next on the agenda was breakfast since we had missed dinner last night. We decided to stop at the next place we saw that server breakfast. Well about 45 minutes and 55 miles, we found a place to eat in a town called, you guessed it, Ozark. Karen threatened to bite the head off of the first person that gave her any trouble and it was amazing how quickly we got fed.

 

The roads around Branson all seem to have been carved through with a huge knife. I guess they needed the rock for something. It seems like they would have just run the roads over the hills. Then again the roads are pretty hilly as it is. There are so many rivers and creeks around, it is a wonder they have roads at all. The roads are actually pretty good comparing them with the ones farther north.

 

The storms seem to have all gone now and in their place are those white fluffy clouds that block the sun from getting too hot and give you shapes to guess what they resemble.  Everything on this ride was just beautiful until we got close to Rolla. There was road construction for 5 miles and the jam started at about 15 miles before Rolla where we had planned to turn off. We saw a frontage road with several cars on it, so we decided we would take the next exit and parallel the road. Well that was a mistake. First it was a gravel road, then about 2 miles down, it dead ended. Now we had to backtrack and still wait forever in the traffic. Unlike California, you are not allowed to split lanes.  By the time we got to Rolla, we wer exhausted. It is hard to ride that slow and your clutch hand gets sore.

 

We finally passed the construction and were now so far behind that we decided to only try to make it another 60 miles. This put us here in Jefferson. We had a great ride that last stretch.  I had a minor mishap with a highway peg, but that just a few minutes to correct. We almost ran into some geese taking off, but otherwise just a great ride.

 

Well another day has come and gone and the only regret is that there are so few left on this trip. After tomorrow, it will be pretty much a straight shot home. At least as straight as I can make myself go and still see you on the byways…