Tuesday morning we left Prairie du Chien. We knew we were in for a very hot day with heat warnings all over the area. First we stopped at the post office and mailed home 13 lbs of gear. The night before we stopped at Cabella's and bought some hot weather gear. The things we sent home were warm weather things we replaced with hot weather gear. The postal workers really liked our story, helped us pack up our stuff, and took a picture of us with our bikes and package in front of the post office.

After riding up a very big, long hill, we stopped to rest in the shade. We met Jim Reynolds, a very nice recumbent rider out for a ride. We talked for a while and he gave us some pointers on the bad road conditions ahead. He had just come from the way we were going. The bad spots were on the down hill. If we had hit the bad spots without warning we could have been in trouble. Thanks Jim.

The first town we came to was Bagley. We stopped at Grandpa's cooled down, and had sandwichs that we carried out of a neighboring bar, the Irish Pub. As we were eating, Jim stopped in. He was still on his ride. Nice seeing him again.

As we left town, we ran into road construction and a worker who stopped us. They were paving one lane from one town to another. He told us that the paving machine was currently several miles ahead on a long steep hill. They had flag men that were directing the traffic to use the other lane. He told us that it would be very hot by the machines and dangerous. He did not want us to go that way. He gave us an alernate route, but it was mostly gravel. It went to a different town. He told us someone there could direct us to Cassville, the next town we wanted to go to. This really slowed us down with the gravel and the heat.

We arrived in Glen Haven and stopped at a bar to get some water and soda and ask for directions. There were some very nice people that gave us detailed directions to Cassville and they even called ahead for us so we could reserve a hotel. Good thing we did, the road crews had most of the rooms taken. One was full and the other one only had one cabin, which we got.

We headed for Cassville and quickly checked in and hit the pool. Nice way to cool down. With the heat today I drank two 3-litre camel backs of water, six sodas, and other water at our stops. I do believe I sweated it all out. All in all we met some very nice people today, and had a very good time.

Blisters Score
Katie 0
Laura 0
Chris 60
Chuck 68
Roger 24

36 miles (172 total)
Google Earth File