Day 116: Saint Louis, MO/Granite City, IL

We were up early today, thinking that we would beat the heat with an early start.  I started riding around 6:30 am, but only got about 5 miles down the road before we caught up to a thunderstorm that was being funneled toward St. Louis.  A couple of flashes of lightning struck near the trail I was riding on several miles in front of me, which prompted us to stop and wait things out.  That was a good decision, as it ended up raining for hours.  Despite the continuing rain, I'd  go a few more miles down the trail whenever it looked as though the lightning had moved on.  

We were waiting just south of Carlinville...

It seemed to be my day for wrong turns (I haven't had one of those in a while).  A good part of the ride was on trails, and those trails would get shunted off on to surface streets.  That's where I got crossed up, twice.  The first time, I was following a trail alongside some railroad tracks.  Then the trail disappeared.  Since it wasn't that far to where I would rendezvous with Alea, I bushwhacked a couple of miles of dirt road to get back on track (not so much fun with all the rain we had today).

The second time I made a wrong turn onto a new trail.  That ended up taking me seven miles out of the way, six of which was on a very wet cinder surface.

We finally reached Granite City, IL around noon, where we checked into the KOA ($45.50, power, water, cable, wi-fi, showers) - at least the shower rooms are air conditioned.  

A souvenir of the wet cinder paths...

After I got cleaned up from the soggy ride this morning, we unhitched the trailer and drove into St. Louis, where Alea dropped me off at the Gateway Arch.  Urban areas are always challenging for us, primarily because there aren't many places where you can park a van and camper that together are 30 feet long.  So it was easier logistically to ride this segment in reverse, when I could be dropped off before rush hour traffic had started to build.  We'll get an early start tomorrow, so that Alea can get headed out of town before the morning rush hour starts to build.

It was an interesting ride back to the campground.  The Gateway Arch area was getting a very badly needed face lift, so it was pretty chaotic with construction activity.  So I scurried past all that and headed to the waterfront, where they are just finishing up a new extension of their Riverfront Trail.

My dad was born in a tenement across the river behind this statue of
Lewis and Clark's return to St Louis - near where there is now a casino.

But not far down the trail, things started looking a bit sketchy: lots of graffiti everywhere, and the area transitioned to an old industrial neighborhood.  The trail would pass back and forth on either side of the flood barriers, which became choke points, where it was necessary to slow down to get through them.  I couldn't help thinking they would be great places to ambush an unsuspecting tourist.  I felt a lot better when I started seeing some other cyclists on the trail.  It was also reassuring to use Life360 to see that Alea was able to safely drive past that sketchy part of town.

Old industrial architecture.  Pretty cool.  The Power and Light building.

At least the Chain of Rocks Bridge was a fitting end to our trip down Route 66, though there were plenty of signs of vandalism.

The 22 degree bend in the bridge resulted from the need to keep the bridge piers on bedrock. 

Not sure what this is.  A similar nearby structure appeared to be a lighthouse to warn
of the Chain of Rocks rapids.

I rode a total of 56 miles for the day.

We found some Missouri DOT bike maps on line and have decided to alter our route through Missouri.  The maps show four categories of traffic volumes, plus those roads with at least four foot shoulders (hopefully paved).  Those route changes are now reflected on our current route map (Summer 2016).  We will go as far west as Jefferson City, then ride southeast toward the Ozarks where we will eventually reconnect with portions of the Trans America and Great Rivers South routes that we didn't ride last year.