St Charles, Missouri to Washington, Missouri

Last night me and Peggy and Steven walked to town for dinner from our fancy Best Western plus hotel. It was hot during the day but by early evening it was oppressive. We were drenched just walking. Welcome to today, June 13. We selected a shortish day to ride on the trail. By 9am it was already 88. We were in good spirits though, the headwind gave us a bit of a breeze and the ride was mostly flat. The trail is covered in a white gravel and the condition is excellent. One thing I notice about riding on these trail is the condition is consistently good to excellent and there is no litter or vandalism and almost no graphiti. I think this bodes well for cyclists as a collective. The trail was beautiful to occasionally opening to views of the Missouri River, farm lands and meadows. It was hot as hell today. My bicycle computer registered 106. We thought we'd get lunch just off the trail around Mike 28 but no such luck. We stopped at a bike shop along the trail and bought a Gatorade and sat there cooking off. 2 sister's came in too they are vacationing cycling the trail. One sister lives and Marshfield and works at Arch Bishop Williams in Braintree. 1 Mike from my house.

We get off of the trail on for our final few miles into town. It's super hot. We are riding in farm land headed into a brisk headwind. Then the road turns into a dusty newly grated dirt road. Really tough riding. We are getting enveloped in plumes of fast by the handful of farm machinery, trucks and cars. When we got off of that we crossed the Missouri river on a bike lane into the wind and over a few hills on some busy roads to THE SMOOTHIE KING! We were dripping in sweat. The girl behind the counter gave us ice water. Steven ordered a 32 ounce smoothie and I had a 4O ounce smoothie. We are showered and resting Peggy just arrived and took that same roads we did. It seems as though she drank 40oz of Gatorade!