Day 2-St. Charles, MO to Hermann, MO (65/125 miles)

I broke Camp today and was on the trail by 8 AM. As far as I could tell, my landlord was still asleep when I left. Lewis and Clark generally cooked at night and left at 6 AM. As the weather warms up, I will try to follow their example.

The next 150 miles of my journey will be on the Katy Trail, which is a spectacular rails-to-trails project that was spearheaded by Edward (Ted) Jones and his wife Pat (yes, that family) in the late 1980s. The trail is composed of finely crushed limestone that can absorb a lot of water; but not nearly as much as it received today!  The rain started about an hour after I left this morning and continued all day long. By noon the trail was pure mud.  

I am carrying about 75 pounds of gear (and about 15 pounds of extra weight on my body).  The one and three-quarter inch tires I have on this heavy steel bike (the same Surly Long Haul Trucker I took down the Mississippi river trail) were leaving deep tracks in the mud.  By the time I arrived in Hermann, it was dark and I was a mess.  My bike and gear were completely caked in mud and I could feel the sand in my chain grinding against the sand in my sprockets.  

I rode the Katy Trail in September 2015, and it is normally full of cyclists.  Today I did not see one other cyclist!  

In the afternoon I decided to put my bike cleats on in the hope of riding a little faster.  (My pedals are flat on one side and have clips on the other side.) What a mistake!  By the time I arrived in Hermann my left Achilles was swollen and bruised - tendinitis caused by the strain of repeatedly pulling the pedal up as I hauled my heavy load through the mud.  

Hermann is a lovely little German tourist town on the south side of the Missouri River that is in the heart of Missouri's wine country.  I stayed at the Harbor Haus, which is a small inn that I stayed at when I rode the Katy trail in 2015.  I have fond memories of having breakfast there with a couple of  salty old riverboat pilots who regaled me with stories about life on the Missouri, Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, including time spent with the late John Hartford, a multi-talented steamboat pilot and singer-songwriter who penned the Glen Campbell classic "Gentle On My Mind".

On this visit to Hermann I spent most of my time sleeping and cleaning my bike and gear. I had breakfast the following morning with a cheerful group of eastbound cyclists from Dallas who told me that the rain had not been very bad to the west of Hermann.  Thanks.

I should not complain. My boys Lewis and Clark had it a lot tougher than this.  

At this point in their journey they were traveling upstream in three boats with a crew of about 45 men.  The largest of the boats was a 55 foot long keelboat built in Pittsburgh to Lewis's specifications.  It came complete with a cabin, oars for 20 rowers and a mast upon which a sail could be hoisted.

The problem was that  the keelboat was better suited for the deep Ohio and Mississippi rivers than it was for the shallow and fast flowing Missouri River.  There was a navigable channel in the Missouri River, but the fast current in the channel carried dangerously large logs and other debris.  To avoid those hazards, the corps of the expedition discovery had to make their way slowly up the shallow sides of the river where the current was not so swift.  

This presented its own challenges.  The keelboat would sometimes become lodged upon submerged logs and mud.  The crew would often have to free the marooned keelboat using poles and even pull it from the riverbanks using ropes.

It was at about this point in the river that the mast of the keel boat broke after colliding with the branch of a tree protruding from the backwaters of the river.  I'll try to remember that story the next time I have a flat tire!

The crew members who were not in the keelboat were traveling in two "pirogues", which were canoe – shaped, flat – bottomed boats that were each about 40 feet long and capable of carrying about about 5 tons of weight.  Surprisingly, the pirogues tended to lag behind the keelboat, which suggests to me that they were beset with their own hardships as they made their way upstream in the fast flowing river.

I passed a handmade canoe that someone is making along the banks of the river from a falling tree. He appears to be using construction methods similar to those that were used by the crew of the expedition to make the pirogues.  Much further along in their journey, the crew learned from the Nez Perce Indians a superior construction method for building boats.

 

My weather tomorrow is supposed to be better - more rain in the morning but then clearing in the afternoon.  I'm going to take the morning off, sleep in, take some anti-inflammatories and not wear my cleats!