Day 126: Silver Mines Recreation Area, MO

Alea's 50 mile ride yesterday went very well.  Being Saturday, we had hoped that truck traffic would be nearly non-existent on the first third of the ride, but that wasn't the case.  There was a steady parade of dump trucks traveling in both directions, but they were courteous and only passed when it was clear there was no oncoming traffic.  

The next third of her ride was among some of the best cycling terrain we've seen in the past year, and the road surface was in great shape.  Alea was loving it, and she was thinking it would be more of the same for the rest of the ride into Frederickstown, MO.  But Mother Nature sent her reminder: you are still in the Ozarks!  Fortunately that reminder was mainly in the form of one long, steep grade, but with some other shorter steep grades tossed in for good measure.

I gave this little guy a lift across the road, to keep him from getting squished...

When we reached town Alea was finally able to find something she had been seeking for the past two weeks: a root beer float.  A lot of the franchise fast food and dairy places don't have them on the menu.  It's generally the locally owned places or A&Ws where they are found, and it has taken this long to find the former.

We camped at Riverside Campground at Silver Mines Recreation Area ($18, power only, vault toilets, communal water).  It was a nice enough place, and the campground hosts were very friendly.  The humidity dropped somewhat below 50% and the highs weren't much above the mid-80s, so it was comfortable enough to stay outside all afternoon.  We can only hope that we'll have a few more of those days before it heats up again.

It looks as though the water pump in our camper has given up the ghost.  We'll need to contact the factory to see if there are any obvious things that we haven't checked to get it back up and running, or if it will be necessary for them to send us a replacement.  Right now we are in the market for a collapsible water carrier, as we need an efficient means of getting additional water when we are in where we only have access to a communal water supply.