Day 23

This was not one of the more pleasant days of the trip. At least not from the start.

It had continued to rain on and off through the night, although I slept ok. When I'd checked in at the office, the woman thought I was another cyclist who had apparently called ahead and said he'd be arriving late. I thought that would be cool to talk with another touring cyclist, but he never showed up; perhaps with the rain he did the smart thing and just got a motel. I think I can actually deal fine with the rain; the real problem with the night/morning was the mosquitos. There were swarms of them, both regular, normal-sized ones, and these crazy mutants five to ten times the size of a normal mosquito. I haven't really had to deal with any mosquitos at all since Indiana, so I'd forgotten what a huge effect they have on my camping enjoyment. At night I doused myself liberally in repellant, so it wasn't too bad, but in the morning I figured I could do without. Big mistake. I'm sure if anyone was watching me, they would have been quite entertained as I was constantly swatting, shaking, scratching, rubbing, running, and cursing the whole time while I was packing up my gear. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. When I set up my tent this evening, I saw that it's speckled with spots of blood (presumably my own) from the well-fed mosquitos sitting on and in the tent that were crushed when I rolled it up.

It was still quite gray, so I had put on my still-damp clothes from the day before. Good idea, since it started drizzling again just after I began. Within half a mile, I was on the bridge crossing the Mississippi. The bridge I could see from the campsite is apparently the new cable-stay bridge still under construction. I went across on the old narrow bridge right next to it. Since it was raining, I unfortunately couldn't get a picture of my border crossing, and the only sign I saw anyway was at the middle of the bridge, and I definitely wasn't going to stop there.

Once I started riding west through Cape Girardeau, I realized that there was a strong northwest wind blowing. There were also a lot of hills. I've fought the winds, and I've fought the hills, but I don't think I've fought them both at the same time before. It's no fun. No fun at all. My average was just over 10 mph for a while, and I would rarely get above 11 mph. I couldn't tell if I felt tired on top of those difficulties, or if it was the difficulties that were making me feel tired. But I know I felt tired. And I know I felt cold. It was around 70 for much of the day, and normally that would be a perfect temperature, but not when your feet are in shoes still soaked from the night before, and when you have a 15 mph wind in your face.

The only thing I had going for me was that I knew it would be a relatively short distance today. So I must have stopped four or five times in the first 15 miles. At one of the stops, in the very nice county park just east of I-55, I filled my water bottle in the bathroom, and five miles later realized I'd left it sitting on the sink. Just a little more insult to my injuries, although I guess I'm happy that I haven't lost more stuff on this trip (that I'm aware of).

Once I was out of Jackson, on US 72, it was another one of those 40 mile stretches with basically nothing along the way. Nothing but hills and wind. The road had no shoulder, had lots of bumps and cracks, and although there wasn't too much traffic, it seemed like there was an unusual concentration of large pickups and monster trucks. I even had my first negative comment of the entire trip thrown at me (or the first one I could understand at least) when a guy in a passing car yelled "Get off the road, you dumbass!" At least there was only the occasional drop of rain, but the gray clouds were depressing. Even my normally sure-fire pick-me-up of saying "Moo!" to herds of cows I pass by (and watching them turn their heads to look at the moron on the bike) wasn't doing too much for me. I did switch the lenses in my sunglasses from gray to orange for the first time in the trip, and that actually did help a little bit.

Shortly after one of my brief breaks along the roadside, I came across a house on the left side of the road where a pack of five dogs started charging at me from the front yard. Just as the lead dog was about to enter the roadway, a car flying by in the other direction caused him to swerve and pause for an instant. But as soon as the car passed, he was back coming at me, and in the roadway. What he didn't see was the pickup truck barrelling down the road right behind the car, and in a split second he was hit, under the wheels, and left lying motionless in the middle of the road.

I have no idea what the protocol is in situations like this, but the truck didn't even pause, and with four dogs still coming at me, I wasn't about to stop either. But I felt terrible. Even though dogs have been one of the major nuisances of the trip, this was a punishment far worse than the crime. I know it wasn't really my fault, but if I hadn't been going by right then, that dog would still be alive. I guess the saddest part of the whole thing is that dogs won't learn a thing from it, and neither will their owners who let them run loose into the road. It's something I certainly never want to see again for the rest of my life.

So with that incident weighing heavily on my mind, I finally made it to Fredericktown. I was originally going to go into the center of town, maybe stopping at the library if it was open, but there was a Wal-Mart/McDonald's right on the route, so I stopped there since I really didn't feel like adding any unneccessary miles to the day. I got lunch, a new water bottle, and a bit of food.

And as I've learned, if you wait long enough, days like this will eventually turn around. Leaving Wal-Mart was when today turned around. The lines of clouds had begun to spread apart, and with the sun shining through they were transformed from a rolling gray mass into bright white puffy balls dappling the sky. I also got off US 72, and was onto county roads, and suddenly the countryside got far more pleasant. I was amongst farms set within the rolling hills, in an area that felt very much like Wisconsin. There were red barns, white houses, cows, horses, goats, and I even saw some llamas. One road I was one suddenly turned to gravel, but not even that brought me down. It just made the area feel more rustic, and the surface really wasn't much worse than US 72 anyway.

Eventually I neared Hawn State Park, coming in from the backside along another quiet gravel road. Rolled down a big hill to the campground, and it's beautiful. They have a few walk-in sites well off the driveway, but I didn't even bother to take one of those since the closer sites are really nice too. And the bathhouse is probably the best I've seen, each shower is its own individual room. I've been sitting out at the picnic table in the dark writing this journal entry, and while it's getting a bit cold (I'm wearing my long-sleeve for the first time), there hasn't been a single mosquito! So while there were many parts of the day I'd like to forget, there also ended up being plenty worth remembering. And my shoes are nearly dry too!