If these hills were any steeper they'd be a brick wall.....or I guess they'd be the hills in Kentucky (so we hear)

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Day 37 Houston, MO to Ellington, MO
Total Miles: 70.0 (2507.9miles to date)

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! The rumors are true. Missouri hills are really steep and hard to ride up. If you consider the fact that it is very hot here (90+) and very humid, and there are no shoulders, and the roads are steep enough that they don’t even bother listing the grade (I felt 14%+ is accurate), then yes these are harder climbs than those out west. More different but harder still. We had an easy day lined up today so we only had some serious climbing to do at the end of the day so we could take it easy early in the day.

We ended up hanging out at the Alley Spring for a few hours to allow it to cool off today; it didn’t. At some point we decided we have to get going so we set out for the hills of the Ozarks and it was really difficult. I was dripping sweat and really cranking hard in my granny gear and still feeling like I was barely going to make it at 3mph. Jess also felt these were the hardest hills around.

We got lucky and Liam’s tip worked out and we got in contact with the WarmShowers people and they were awesome. We had dinner with them and talked about everything you could think of. They are extremely nice people and we are grateful to them for helping us out.

That’s it for today and we hope to make Farmington tomorrow in order to see a movie and relax a bit before we leave Missouri some time early Sunday.

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Comments

[Lois & fam.]

teacher at the ball park
Wow! Neat experience talking with you! Sorry we had to leave so abrouptly! Good luck and God bless! You are an inspiration to so many! Keep up the good work!