Day 12 – Pacific Junction to Missouri Valley – Cool and Hot

47.7 miles today – 627.6 total miles

We left Pacific Junction this morning and headed for Council Bluffs.  The weather was cool-ish as rain was threatening.  We once again had a great tail wind.  Council Bluffs  has a great network of bike trails that crisscross most of the city.  These trails got us most of the way across town.

At the junction of two of these trails we reached a great milestone – the end of our first Adventure Cycling map – 555 map miles from St Louis.  We are now on Section 2 of the AC Lewis and Clark maps.

In town we made our first stop a bike shop for a fender bolt for Keith’s bike that we had lost somewhere on the Katy Trail.  We also replaced Keith’ petals and the cleats on his riding sandals that were giving problems.  It rained for a bit while we were in the Bike Shop.   Once we took care of that we spied our first Taco Bell since St Louis and had lunch.  Then we went by the Library and checked e-mail then went down the street to Steam’n Koffee, (28 Pearl Street) a Coffee shop with wireless access so we could update the web site.   We each got a smoothie and Michelle was great in helping us get our site updates.  Another place you should stop if you travel the LC Bike Trail.  After another stop at the bike shop for a mirror for Keith and at the grocery store for supper and breakfast we headed out of town.

We only had another 25 miles to go, but the challenge now was the heat.  With a heat index of 107 it was a bit toasty.  May I suggestion you purchase stock in Gatorade soon?  It took a bit of time with multiple stops to cool down to reach our destination.  By the time we got to Missouri Valley we were pretty hot and exhausted.  We went by the camping area in town – the fairgrounds – only to discover the county fair going on.  We decided to look elsewhere and found a Days Inn with a pool.

After checking in, Keith took a quick shower and headed for the pool.  He kept repeating, “This is the Bestest hotel ever!”  It was very refreshing.  I told him about the hot tub/pool combination and he dared me to try it.  So after sitting the hot tub I jumped in the pool.  Then he tried it and we did that for several times until our pizza supper arrived.

GPS Track