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There’s no way I’m going to write an entry for each day I missed so I’ll try my best to summarize and mention some highlights. I’m going to break this up into a couple posts so that I won’t exceed any image limits.

This was from day 54-59. My leg issue was pretty bad for one more day (54) and I ended up staying at a motel in Valentine rather than camping as I had intended. A few hours after making this decision, a storm rolled in together with 3 extreme weather alerts in the span of an hour. First it was golfball sized hail, then a tornado alert (+ actual tornado sirens), then finally 80mph winds. I definitely used up a good chunk of my life’s luck reserves here.

I had my first bit of rail-trail over these days on the Cowboy Trail. It was kind of disappointing: the trail surface wasn’t super packed (so I lost quite a bit of speed compared to the road), there was no shade or water on the trail, and the highway (with a nice shoulder) was pretty much parallel the entire way. Towards the end I just went back on the highway, though the terrible shoulder cracks would occasionally reappear.

Around this time the midwest was being hit by a heatwave, though it would get worse as I entered Missouri.

Day 60-63. I only spent a day in Iowa, on the Wabash-Trace trail. It was a decent trail, though kind of messy, but that may have been due to all the storms that had rolled through. I saw fireflies for the first time in my life, which was definitely a highlight. I was utterly unprepared for the rolling hills in Missouri, though. Coupled with a major heatwave (heat index 100+ by noon) meant difficult but short days. I deviated from the Bike Nonstop official route for this section, since I prioritized having a hotel every day to escape the heat and rinse off. To give you some context, the hills would regularly exceed 8-10% in grade and were truly nonstop. On Day 62 I logged over 4000ft of ascent in less than 60 miles; when I rode through Yellowstone into Grand Teton NP, I had about 4000ft over 80+ miles. Oh yeah, I was also waking up at 4am and setting off around 5am for this section due to the aforementioned heat. This meant my days ended more or less by noon, and luckily the hotels I stayed at had plenty of ready rooms available so I was always able to check in early.

I also had my first crash of the trip here. I was merging back onto the highway from the gravel shoulder when my tire caught the edge of the pavement and slipped out. I bruised my hip and palm pretty badly, and scraped some skin on my forearm, but otherwise was OK. Bike was fine too. Another lucky moment.