Bellevue looks pretty at sunrise. Jan’s out early in the morning on a training ride to prepare for a bikepacking trip later this month, and is rewarded with a nice view across Lake Washington towards the Cascade Mountains.
Moxie wants to come in — many times a day. Since we lost his brother in April, Moxie’s true personality has been revealed: he is a needy, needy cat. He spends most days meowing to be let out and then a short while later meowing to be let back in. He meows for food, meows for pets, meows for reasons we don’t understand. We no longer let him out after dusk, so he spends the evenings meowing and meowing to be let outside.
Angela flies to Montana for a wedding. She sneaks out a few days before the wedding to spend a couple days in Yellowstone National Park. On the drive from Bozeman into Yellowstone (entering from the West Entrance), she manages to catch the Artist Paintpots at dusk.
1st full day in Yellowstone. Since Yellowstone is a place where one can easily spend a week and Angela only has a couple days, she focuses on the geothermic features and geysers. Here she is at the Grand Prismatic Spring overlook before hiking to Fairy Falls. It’s a little grey and rainy but still beautifully incredible. She continues driving and spends the night in Gardiner, by the North Entrance of the park. She meets with her friend Rebecca Blackwell, who happens to be visiting Yellowstone at the same time, for dinner.
2nd Yellowstone day. The next morning, Angela heads from Gardiner to the Mammoth Hot Springs area, where she hikes around the lower terrace boardwalk before doing a solo hike up and around the back of the upper terrace drive, heading towards the Hoodoos. Unlike the hikes the day before, no one else is on the trail. She is grateful for bear spray and thankfully saw no bears: only chipmunks, birds, butterflies, and a magpie.
She ends the day with a drive from Gardiner back to Bozeman—less than 2 hours away.
Day in Bozeman. The families of the groom (Dylan Baker) and bride (Lauren Miller) put together a fun day for guests who have arrived early for the wedding. Angela starts the day playing pickleball, then checks out the Montana Grizzly Bear Encounter, and visits the Museum of the Rockies.
Others head to the Mica Mines, which apparently involved adventurous four-wheeling. Angela, who is prone to motion sickness, is grateful not to have gone to the Mica Mines.
Angela celebrates with Lauren Williams and Dylan Baker at their wedding in Bozeman, MT. Dylan and Evan were in kindergarten together, and our families went on ski trips through many years! The wedding was lovely and many other parents from the same kindergarten class attended—it was like a kindergarten parent reunion!
The earliest photo we have of Dylan is from Febrary 2010, when we spent one of many ski vacations with families from the kids’ school:
Dylan was the little boy in red — and now he’s the bearded man who got married today.
Jan’s Missouri bike trip, Day 0. I get a very early 5:30 taxi to SeaTac for a flight to meet my brother Chris in St. Louis. We’re meeting there to start a 6-day bike trip tomorrow on the Katy Trail, a railroad-to-trail conversion. We’ll travel it for some 230 miles, across country for half of it, and then following the Missouri River down to St. Charles near St. Louis.
We meet up at our hotel for tonight in St. Charles, and after dropping off my bag we walk down Main St. to the Bike Stop Cafe. This is a small bike shop and sits just off the Katy Trail. We’ll be renting bikes from this shop, then pedaling back to this point over the next 6 days. (That’s a very leisurely pace.) Sadly, the woman who’s running the bike portion of the business is just finishing work for the day, so we’ll have to come back early tomorrow to pick up our bikes.
We walk across the adjacent park to take a look at the Missouri River, then get drinks from the cafe and hang outside for a bit. It still feels like summer here – the oppressive summer heat lasted until about two weeks ago before finally breaking. That timing is why we’re doing the trail now instead of during the summer.
After a nap back at the hotel, we walk down to Shay’s Creole Barbecue for dinner, which has glowing reviews online. The food is indeed excellent. Many of the restaurant’s dishes get finished in a smoker, including the tasty smoked blueberry cobbler.
Jan’s Missouri bike trip, Day 1. We return to the Bike Stop Cafe for breakfast at 7:00 am, then get set up with our bikes. We’re ready for the departure of a van that will shuttle us to the town of Clinton at the other end of the Katy Trail. Another biking couple is going with us, although they’ve just finished the trail and are returning to the car they parked in Clinton.
We’ve gone two hours west on I-70, about halfway to Clinton, when the driver announces that there’s a problem with the van and pulls into a rest area. A belt that’s responsible for the power steering has gotten out of place; we can see part of the belt dangling below the van. The shuttle company asks for help from another bike shuttle company, who sends a van from Clinton. We end up having to spend two hours at the rest stop before the new van arrives and we can reload our bikes.
The new shuttle is nice and takes us past the start of the Katy Trail into the center of Clinton so we can get a late lunch at the Ben Franklin Bistro. After lunch we can finally finish getting our bikes and ourselves ready to ride, and begin biking around 3:00 pm. We have 40 miles to go to our hotel in the town of Sedalia.
After a mile or so to the edge of Clinton, we come to the start of the railroad grade that became Katy Trail State Park. It’s light-colored small gravel and easy to bike on, although a little slower (and a little more work) than riding on pavement. A few minutes later we come to a small structure marking the old location of the Clinton railway station and the official start of the Katy Trail. There’s a little bell there for us to ring to mark the start of our trip.
Like all rail trails, the Katy Trail is mostly straight and level; any inclines are so gradual that you can’t really perceive them. Much of this part of the trail is lined with trees, beyond which we can see glimses of farms and prairie.
After 19 miles the trail passes right by a gas station so we stop for a cold drink and a snack before continuing. While we’re getting back on our bikes, we see an (Amish?) man in a horse-drawn carriage pull up to the hardware store across the street. There’s an honest-to-god hitching post for him to tie up his horse, plus a water trough for the horse to drink from.
We occasionally see deer in the trees or hawks and eagles flying overhead. At one point Chris spots a large… woodchuck? hanging out in front of its burrow. As the afternoon wears on towards evening, I spot a large bird flying directly overhead. This proves to be a large owl. It stops ahead of us, then when we get closer moves ahead again, before finally flying off somewhere. Another point of interest: at a small road crossing we’re startled by the lights and sound of an old railroad crossing sign. Someone seems to have rigged it up to flash and ring whenever cyclists go by.
My legs are quite tired by the time we reach the outskirts of Sedalia. Although we’ve had some sun this afternoon, it begins to drizzle. At 7:00 pm, just as it’s getting dark, we reach the town square with neon lights advertising the Hotel Bothwell – our lodging for the night. We’re happy to get cleaned up and warmed up before a decent meal at the hotel restaurant.
Jan’s Missouri bike trip, Day 2. Both Chris and I feel much better after a long night’s sleep. We venture out into Sedalia’s town square at 8:00 to check out a coffee place, but there’s a line out the door. It looks like people are setting up some event down the block, and it’s brought too many people to the popular coffeehouse. We have to settle for the other coffeehouse two blocks away, which is empty of customers and unimpressive.
Today we’re biking 50 miles, which is a fairly modest distance for a bikepacking trip but should be our longest day on this trip. It’s easy to pick up the Katy Trail on the edge of town and resume pedaling northeast.
The trail is pleasantly forested like yesterday, with some areas that are surrounded by ground that no longer appears to be farmed. It’s quite, and although it’s a weekend in the trail’s high season we only see a few other cyclists. We make a short detour into Pilot Grove for gas station snacks and coffee, drinking our coffees while sitting outside on overturned milk crates.
We stop in Boonville around 1:00 for lunch, opting for a promising Cuban restaurant that’s as good as we’d hoped. As we take the road north out of Boonville, we come to a long bridge crossing over the Missouri River.
In the afternoon, we have two more wildlife encounters of a sort. The first is the remains of a dead armadillo in the middle of the trail; all that’s left is the distinctive carapace. At a later point, Chris suddenly slams on his brakes: there’s a little box turtle in the trail. The turtle has a companion that scurries into the underbrush as fast as he can move, but the first turtle just stands where he is, checking us out.
We reach our destination of Rocheport a little before 4:00. Our lodging tonight is the Katy Trail B&B, which sits just off the trail.
There’s not much to the town, but thankfully there is the Rocheport Winery where we can get a good meal. We’re both happy to be able to start with a fresh salad.
In the evening we discover that there’s a family staying above us in the AirBnB; there’s plenty of kids’ footsteps running back and forth. Thankfully it settles down after a while.
Happy Harvest Moon Festival! For the Harvest Moon Festival this year, Angela hosts her friends Scott Shock and Jean Lee as well as Felix Chen for a hot pot dinner. We enjoy other Asian and round foods but mostly reminisce about teen years and Taiwanese American youth activities in the DC area. No moon cakes though — we are all being mindful of our diets!
Jan’s Missouri bike trip, Day 3. Rocheport turns out to have a cafe that’s open for breakfast. Today’s Sunday, and there are some groups of cyclists having breakfast at the cafe before hitting the trail.
The biking is easy if uneventful all the way to Cooper’s Landing, a snack stand outpost that overlooks the Missouri River. Chris and I order drip coffees, but the young man behind the counter says it’ll take a while for him to brew a new pot. We wait and wait. The coffee machine seems to take a very long while, so while we’re waiting we make a short ride on our bikes to see “Boathenge”. I’m expecting this to be underwhelming, and it is: six old boats standing upright. Oh, well. We go back to the snack stand, and the coffee’s still not ready. We try to give the guy some pointers, but he’s incapable of figuring anything out, and we finally have to settle for a cold coffee from the drink refrigerator.
When the trail passes by Jefferson City, we need to leave the trail to reach our hotel. A spur trail leads to an absolutely massive bike ramp that makes four huge loops before reaching the level of a large bridge crossing over the Missouri River. We check into our hotel and rest for a bit.
We walk around downtown Jefferson City, but there’s not much going on. We walk by the state capitol building, a Lewis & Clark statue, and a Missouri River overlook. It’s getting closer to dinnertime, and after some struggle to summon a car, we manage to get a ride to The Curry ‘N’ Grill – a good Indian restaurant and described by some as the best food in town.
Jan’s Missouri bike trip, Day 4. We bike a short distance to Three Story Coffee for coffee and scones. A young man behind considers our bike clothes and asks where we’re heading, as does a member of a women’s friend group that meets weekly for breakfast. We bike back to the Katy Trail, once more traversing the crazy, huge bike ramp from the highway down to ground level.
The clouds slowly break up over the morning into a clear, warm day, so we’re grateful for the shade provided by the tunnel of trees that surrounds the trail. It seems the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad had purchased a 100-foot right-of-way but only needed a 20-foot strip for the railroad bed. Since farmers on either side couldn’t plant next to the railroad, a strip of trees grew up on either side.
We stop in the tiny town of Mokane to see if anything’s open, but there’s nothing. A little further on, in the tiny town of Portland, we’re surprised that the Holzhausers bar and grill is actually open. (Google thought it would be closed.)
We go inside to get some lunch. This turns out to be easier said than done. The lone woman working the restaurant doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to make anyone’s food or take anyone’s orders; she walks by several times without stopping. We’re trying to decide whether to leave; this is the last restaurant for miles. She finally comes to take our order, and a long while later we finally have our food. A sign on the wall proudly announces that the restaurant is the 2nd best restaurant in the county.
We have to leave the Katy Trail and bike on a highway for 2 miles to reach the town of Hermann for the night. The town, like a number in the area, was settled by German immigrants, so there’s plenty of references to German heritage around. We’re staying on the main street at the Hermannhof Inn. After a shower and a nap, I check out the small Hermann Historical Museum in a former schoolhouse. It’s full of antique clothing, furniture, and farming implements that immigrants brought from Germany or made in a traditional German style.
For dinner we make a long walk across town in the late afternoon sun to the most promising restaurant, a German restaurant called Vintage that’s part of a winery. From the first moment in the door, things look off. There are plenty of tables, but the hostess tells us it will be ten minutes for a table. Once we’re finally seated, there’s a long wait for someone to take our order. The waitress has difficult entering our order – we gave our entree orders before our drink orders, and that’s got her very flustered. She spends several minutes entering the order. A very, very long time later she comes with one of our entrees. “Did you all order just one entree?” she asks. “Uh, no, we had two.” She disappears and eventually returns with the second entree. We wait and wait for the bill, and then there’s another several minutes of tapping at the payment device before we can pay.
All of that was bearable, but what’s troubling is that now it’s dark and cold. I’d worn shorts and short sleeves to dinner because it had been warm, so now I have a very cold walk back across town to our hotel.
Jan’s Missouri bike trip, Day 5. Our hotel restaurant looks like the best option in Hermann for breakfast so we wait until it opens at 8:30 and eat there. After breakfast we pedal back on the highway over the Missouri to resume our eastward journey on the Katy Trail.
Chris is hoping to stop for coffee somewhere this morning, but there are very few businesses open in the small towns we pass. There are several promising-looking options but they all turn out to be closed, or at least closed today. We have a little luck in the town of Peers, where we spot the Peers Store just off the trail. This is a cute store that’s aimed at bike travelers, although most of its offerings are merch, books, or other goods. They do a have a small selection of cold sodas so we each get one.
A short while later we reach a turn-off for one of the only points of interest we’ll pass today: the gravesite of Daniel Boone. It’s not much to look at, but riding for a few minutes on a country road instead of the rail trail is a nice change of pace.
It’s getting warm when we reach our destination of Washington, where our first stop is a late lunch. We check into our hotel and then explore for a bit. The most interesting thing to see is the Missouri Meerschaum Corn Cob Pipe Museum and Shop. Chris and I are mostly amazed that there’s still enough of a market for corn cob pipes to warrant a factory that’s still cranking out thousands of them a day. The man in the shop proudly observes that the company is the last remaining manufacturer of corn cob pipes. This fact is less impressive after we walk through the exhibit and it becomes apparent that they bought up all their competition.
We enjoy a drink in the hotel’s tavern, then have a dinner of barbecue at a restaurant down by the river. We’ve observed that, although the Missouri is an important river, it’s not an especially beautiful river; it’s muddy, and it’s dotted with piles of muddy rocks and piles of muddy tree trunks.
Jan’s Missouri bike trip, Day 5. Chris and I walk to a coffeehouse called Undergrounds and enjoy breakfast and coffee while again looking at the muddy Missouri River. Back on the bikes, we cross north over the river and avoid the highway by taking a gravel country road until it intersects the Katy Trail. We turn east.
Today we see plenty of cyclists. We’re now getting close to St. Louis and its suburbs, so there are plenty of people out for a quick exercise ride or a leisurely day ride along the trail.
We have the usual difficulty finding a business offering refreshments that’s both close to the trail and actually open, but eventually come to the town of Defiance where we can see at least two businesses open. We stop at the store that’s blasting music at a slightly lower volume than the roadhouse across the street, then take a break on a bench outside listening to the dueling musical offerings.
Chris pokes into the roadhouse, which it appeared on an online directory of quirky tourist stops because it was home to a large collection of dioramas featuring taxidermied squirrels: squirrels playing banjos, squirrels dancing, etc. Sadly the roadhouse was purchased a couple of years ago, and the new owner removed all the squirrels.
The rest of the ride passes easily. Although it’s the last day of September, this is also the warmest day of the trip. (The high today is 89F.) We’re happy to reach the bike shop cafe where we began the trip 5 days ago; the cafe sits right off the trail so we decide to eat lunch there. On the trip we didn’t found anywhere where we could stop for a milkshake, so after lunch we bike down the trail a bit further to an ice cream shop for milkshakes.
We bike back to the shop, take all our gear off the bikes, and then hand them back to the bike shop. As always, we’re grateful to be able to finish a trip where both our bodies and our bikes did everything we asked of them.
In the evening we walk down St. Charles’ picturesque main street to a vintage video game arcade and play some games we remember playing as kids. We stop for a drink on an outdoor patio, then move to a different outdoor patio for a final barbecue dinner. Tomorrow Chris has an early flight back to Colorado; I’ll have a day to spend before a late afternoon flight back to Seattle.