Sunday, May 19th – Day 47 – Springfield to Lebanon

Best part of the day: Tailwinds most of the day

Worst part of the day: An early, unplanned awakening

Distance: 56 miles Riding Time: 4hrs 49min

Bed count: 27 Sleeping Bag count: 20

Got woken up early this morning by the cats. They kept on nipping at our feet around 5:15am! They just wouldn’t stop, so Fay got up and fed them an early breakfast. That seemed to work as they left us alone for at least another hour. We had our breakfast and coffee then packed up and got on the road around 8:15. The ground was still wet, but, the temperature was mild so we only needed our lightweight jackets. That was just right. We fed the cats one more time before leaving just in case the Miles and his family got stuck in traffic. (Out front of our Warm Showers host’s home.)

We were lucky today as we had tailwinds for pretty much the whole day. Yes!! Yes!! It was a nice ride throughout the countryside, but, very little shoulder. In the morning traffic was very light. But, as the day went on it got heavier.

Passed by some fairly new nice neighborhoods on the route out of Springfield. Had plenty of rolling hills, but, nothing too extreme. Lots of family farms along the way. About 25 miles along, reached the town of Marshfield. This was the birthplace of the American astronomer, Edwin Hubble, for whom the space telescope was named! There’s a replica of the telescope on the grounds of the Marshfield county courthouse.

More and more rollers followed Marshfield on our Route 66 path. For a while, the clouds had gotten a bit darker! Wasn’t sure if we were going to get hit with rain, but, that never materialized! Yes!!

Took a lunch break outside at a Phillips 66/Redmon’s Candy Factory location in Phillipsburg. Had our PB&J on flour tortillas.

Got to our hotel around 2:30. We planned on meeting a friend, Lanny, at 4 at our hotel for dinner. We met him back home at a dinner party hosted by our friends, Sarah and Steve, about couple weeks before we took off for this trip. He was staying in Houston, MO, about an hour and 15 minutes away from us. He had an aunt who’d just passed away here in Missouri and came back to give eulogy and visit family. Couldn’t believe how we just happened to be in the same area and at about the same time! We had a very nice dinner at Applebee’s (picked that restaurant because Rob wanted to watch his hockey game, again another sad result). It was such a pleasure to get to know him better as this was only our second time meeting!!

Tomorrow, we’re off to St. Robert and the home of another Warm Showers host. A somewhat short ride, around 40 miles, but, the wind direction is not looking too good! So, we can only hope they’re light.

Until our next post…