Day 16 - Or how Missouri is my arch-nemesis

Waking up in good spirits, I was off. Scattered thunderstorms had been called for today, which meant some cloud cover and a drop in temperatures to something actually reasonable! Joy!

The first problem was getting to somewhere with shoulder. US 50 was still a bad time for bicyclists, and I'd spent last evening and this morning checking out google maps, looking for the best possible solution. The morning dawned nicely, and I gave myself plenty of time to prep for the day, deciding to take it easy today. I picked up a few things I needed at the local store, and was off.

I tried out the roads I had discovered and soon found that the only roads that parallel US 50 in this area are gravel. A local Tipton city worker stopped next to me as I was checking my map and verified that. Alright, I was just going to have to deal with US 50. Traffic in the Tipton area was light, so I set up the exhausting policy of check behind me, make sure it's clear, sprint for a few seconds, glance back, keep pedaling, and repeat until a car or truck is approaching, then pull off and wait for it to be clear again. Luck was with me, and after about 4 miles of this, I got a nice shoulder back and was off again at a good clip. I made it to Sedalia near noon and took a long break for lunch, letting the sun get a bit past its pinnacle. There were supposed to be afternoon thunder showers, and sure enough, the clouds started gathering. The heat wasn't quite as bad as the last few days either, so I took off fairly soon, noticing a dark patch of clouds looming to the south of town, but fairly clear skies ahead.

Soon after leaving Sedalia, the wind picked up, pushing North-Northwest fairly strongly and giving me a bit of tailwind to push me along. The dark clouds closed in behind me, and a few times some drops of rain hit around me, but not enough to even really dampen me. Still, I wasn't sure if the storm was going to catch me, so I pulled into a gas station about 10 miles outside of Sedalia and waited to see what it would do. The wind blew it north of me while it was still east, but as I was waiting, a man chatted with me asking where I was going and noting that Sedalia had just been hit by either 1/4 or 1/2 inch hailstones (I don't remember which he said yet). A near thing!

In good spirits at my luck, I kept heading west, but soon had a clump of dark clouds ahead of me, streaked fairly regularly with lightning and thunder. I began to get into some rain, stopping at a local park shelter to try to sit out the rain. After waiting around an hour, the rain slackened, but seemed to also be sitting in place. Hoping that it would slacken to nothing, I took off again to gain some distance. Rather than slackening, it may have picked up a bit, so now I'm soaked, including shoes. Grrr!!! I made it into Warrensburg, and am torn on what to do for the evening. Tomorrow calls for scattered thundershowers as well, but I'm hoping it will taper off by the evening. With everything fairly damp, I don't particularly want to immediately soak my clean, dry gear with a wet camp, so getting a hotel looks to be the best bet, even though I'm loathe to do so two days in a row. Still, I should remember that I'm supposed to have fun, and I have been going faster than I was planning (despite the slog of the last two days), so I may splurge if I can find a good price. Dry shoes to start out tomorrow would be great...

Things have flattened out a fair bit, but there are still plenty of trees around - no real grasslands yet. I noticed yesterday that juniper-like plants have gotten fairly common along the road, I'm assuming growing wild. Oaks are still around a lot, but today I noticed a real lack of Maples. I've been trying to keep an eye on the changing plants to really watch the interchanges between forest, plain, desert, etc. I've also become something of a connoisseur of roadkill, given the number of days I've been on the road. The number of small roadkills (songbirds, small snakes salamanders, etc) that we miss in cars is surprising. Illinois and Indiana were notable for the huge number of large snapping turtles - perhaps the most gruesome of roadkill. If I had the time and some way to clean them, collecting some of the colorful feathers from the songbirds to send home would have been an interesting idea, but I'm avoiding contact as I don't have a way to sterilize the feathers.

Tomorrow should see me in Texas, which I really hope gives me better weather than Missouri has!