Nora Vrakas reporting from the Katy Trail

This is Nora Vrakas reporting from the goofing around tent at the Katy Trailhead as a guest blogger.

I started the day watching the sun rising over the Mississippi River while the others sacked in. The motel was wonderful and owned by the Indian man who kindly shuttled us to the car yesterday.

Next Donuts in town and conversation with some very rowdy doobie smoking, Food Inc veterans. The real riders hit the road while Christine and I headed to the Kroger to replenish the cooler. On the drive out, we ran into some closed roads due to road construction. Those are my people and I organized with them to let the others through when they got there on the bikes.

Christine and I were forced to drive the detour and reached our parking spot at this amazing state park. Miles of wooded hills really green. We jumped on our bike and began cranking back toward the other just dying. We are on super light weight race bikes and cannot imagine how the real riders are getting their heavy bikes with gear up those crazy hills. We passed them about 15 miles out and decided to give them the car keys and keep going
North as it was a perfect day. Chistine kicked my butt up and down the hills as usual. She rocks.

We looped back and found Jayne at the car waiting for us. The girlies were pushing to complete 80 miles and the mom has come to the point where she is done. She is so amazing ! After just three days on this ride I cannot imagine what she has achieved. Wow! Very tough.

So we put her bike on the roofrack and headed toward the showers in the park. The ranger insisted that we register for a site before using them even though we had no intention of staying. So we did and proceeded to the men's shower house as the women's was closed for plumbing. No one around at two in the afternoon. We left the park behind knowing we would not find as beautiful a place to sleep tonight

What we did find after first showing the mom the rigors of sagging, was a little patch of grass in the middle of a village Park in marthasville mo. There is a ballgame going on one side and a country music concert on the other. Down the middle is the Katy trail, a rail to trail route that runs 250 miles through mo. Managed to cook blackbean fajitas w onions peppers and tomatoes in the back of my Subaru. Yum. Watermelon and icec bars topped it off . The cooler is getting empty and we have just one more day with the real riders. On to merimec state park near Sullivan tomorrow.