Our campsite near Lesterville, MO.



Our bike makes it to the top of Missouri!!!

Day 9 - We had a clear sky when we went to bed, but during the night the rain hit us again hard. We woke to partly cloudy blue skies, but before 8:30 AM it got cloudy again, so we stopped packing up to see what the weather was going to do. I asked another Park Ranger if he knew how much rain we had in the last 2 days and he said, "My rainguage goes to 10 inches and it was full." We might have had over a foot of rain around here and it might not be done yet! Geri and I are both very anxious to get out of here!!! Fortunately, the weather did improve and by 11:00 AM we were on the road again. We only had to pedal 10 miles to get to Lesterville, MO. where we ate a Chicken Fried Steak special at a cafe and did some very important grocery shopping. Just west of town we got a campsite in a commercial campground. The campground entrance had a difficult creek crossing for us. Because of all the rain, water was over the road and we had to remove our shoes and socks so we could wade the bike and our gear across to the campground. Finally at a campsite we unloaded most of our gear, including our trailer, in order to have an easier ride to Taum Sauk Mountain State Park which was 19 miles away and mostly uphill. Taum Sauk Mountain is the highest mountain in Missouri at 1772 feet. We were only at 700 feet so we had quite a climb on the bike. We made a short visit in the Park which included standing on the highest point in Missouri, with our bike of course! The ride back to camp was much easier with a lot of coasting. We were back in camp a little after 7:00 PM. We had to set up the tent, which we didn't do before we left, because we were in such a hurry to get to Taum Sauk before it got too late. We ended up having to cook in the dark, but we had a good day and it didn't rain! We covered 51 miles today and averaged over 10 mi/hr including our fastest speed on the trip so far of 45 mi/hr. We love Ozark downhill travel!!!