We slept in and got a quick breakfast from Super 8. I called the bike shop and he was open so we headed over to hopefully get my trike fixed. Kwik Keys and Bikes said that they had 20" rims in stock.

Apparently I shouldn't let the girls sleep in.....Taters had enough energy to sit in the room pedaling her bike backwards.

A lot of people like to photograph us with their phones. Outside of Kwick Keys and Bikes I photographed a guy photographing Roger.

We left Best Western after sleeping in and headed for Subway. The cardboard statue of Jarad suggested we eat a sub with 6 grams of fat or less..........so we did. Today is a rest day for us, we are tired and have a very long gap between towns tomorrow. After a rest day today, we should be ready for a big HOT day tomorrow. Temps are expected to be near 100, not including the heat index. Also, we need a chance to let our stuff dry out.

We started out the day with a crappy breakfast at Super 8. We got up at 5:15 so we could hit the road early.

To cross into Arkansas, we had to cross the I55 bridge. It has a pedestrian walkway, but I cannot see that any pedestrians would ever use it. It is nearly impossible to find, impossible to travel to via walking, and it doesn't go anywhere.

Wow, what a horrible night. The thunder and rain rumbled all night, as we slowly dehydrated in our little sweat lodge tents. We all slowly melted, unable to cope with the hot sticky night. At one point I heard Katie put a cold bottle of water on Lauras back, Laura screamed her way back into the land of the alert. A few minutes later it hit me.....where did Katie get a cold bottle of anything? "The pop machine, the stuff is super cold! It is only $1" says katie. In communication between tents I talked Katie into bringing me a bottle. Diet coke, dang.....I never drank it, but I did keep it close to my soul until it no longer was cooler than myself. That was the best $2 I have ever speant.

Our nights sleep was less than stellar. The hotel was a huge disappointment. We all dragged ourselves out of the hotel and sleepily day-dreamed about a nice place to sleep. Motivation was in short supply....so mostly we were quiet.

Since we had then missed breakfast, we hit the main road rather than the route. This would be a huge shortcut, and would hopefully lead us to breakfast. Also, this would mean traffic. The purpose of this trip is to avoid the highway so we hoped to find breakfast quick and get back onto the rural route.

After several miles, no breakfast, so we stopped at a fruit stand. $6 got us as many peaches as we were willing to eat.

75 miles (962 total miles)
Google Earth File

This morning a cat was sitting outside Roger and Chucks room. I wonder if they need to do laundry?

We had a quick gorging on french toast the the restaraunt accross from our hotel (formerly owned by the hotel owner and now sold to family), and hit the road trying to beat the heat. Of course, a headwind for the bazillionth day in a row. This wind from the south needs to change.

Pictures and GPS data to be added later, sorry.
54 miles (887 total)

We left our Charleston EconoLodge after a 6 am breakfast. We are getting hotel breakfast as early as possible, but the days are warming up faster and faster. We might have to start skipping hotel breakfast so we can hit the road even earlier in the day. I am getting sick of it anyway.

I still can't believe that the Comfort Inn in town wouldn't let us put our bikes indoors. We are boycotting them the entire trip. So far Drury motels seem to be the most biker friendly.

We stopped at a gas station in _____ for a quick snack. I just can't eat a big breakfast at 6am and am hungry soon after. By 8 am I am ready for lunch.

Ice cream at 8:30 am is awesome!

We ate our Super 8 breakfast around 6:30, it was pretty good.

We left around 8. That is the problem with hotel breakfasts, you can't eat very early.

We put in a quick 20 miles, trying to beat the heat. We stopped at a local dairy, but it was not open. A nice man told us we could take a rest at his place 6 miles ahead, but we never saw him. Bummer, we all imagined that he had the best lemonade waiting for us.

Chuck said we climbed at 3-6% for several miles straight. I kept checking to see if my tires were flat. I noticed afterwards that a 1-2% grade felt flat.

Sorry about the downtime.

The AC adapter for our router died. Some great IT work by Laura and Dee got it working.

I will try to catch up on posts. I might just do text for tonight, and add photos later.

Thank you for your patience.

We woke up at our regular time, but we were really dragging. The hills yesterday were still being battled in our legs. I also had a drum thumping deep in my skull, so talking me into a rest day was fairly easy for taters. I finished packing (last one) and noticed everyone was trying to sneak a bit more sleep. As a team we considered a rest day, however being the last day of cool weather meant we wanted to at least make some progress. We decided to make it a short day.

I realized today that the road construction made us miss another attraction. We were unable to go to the local tiger sanctuary. Dang. Laura and Taters would have liked that.