Day 45 Rock Port, MO to North Kansas City, MO

2475. 9 miles

We spent the morning down in the river valley among Missouri corn, and after lunch we started into the hills of Missouri. The hills have changed. It is clear that these are no longer the blown dust hills of Iowa. These hills have bedrock. They were born a tectonic birth. The forests are different as well, thick, robust, hardwood.

This is beginning to look like home. I recognize these hills, these trees.

It was a late morning out of Rock Port today. A storm rolled in around 5:30am. We were scheduled to rise, the alarm was preparing it's shrill call, as the rain began to fall, hard. It kept us in the tent until 9am, and it took us a couple hours to dry out or belongings before we could hit the road.

Eighty miles later we were just outside of St. Joseph, twenty miles short of our goal for the day, and dusk was falling. We had hoped to ride through St. Joseph to a spot just outside of North Kansas City. Amanda's cousing Natalie was going to pick us up there and take us to her place in NKC. But, we ran out of daylight, and as Andy would say, "Wear your helmet, and don't ride at night."

Sage advice.

Natalie picked us up outside of St. Joseph instead. We managed to cram three people, two bikes, and all of our belongings into her little Nissan. It was a feat worth of circus clowns. Natalie took us back to her apartment and cooked us a delicious spaghetti dinner. A fair warning to others: do not invite cyclists into your house for spaghetti unless you enjoy cooking like the matriarch of a large Italian family.