This morning we said our goodbyes to Yinka, Alex, and Adrianna. It was a delight to have them with us and we are sad to see them leave. In not too many years, Alex will be old enough to join us on bike trips.
Our day started out fairly pleasantly as most Sundays too. We had very low traffic for quite a few miles. On some of the roads, we had great shoulders and just short of no traffic. However as we went on, the shoulders tended to get skinnier and the traffic increased.
We stopped in Eddyville at the Suwannee Restaurant and Lounge to get a quick breakfast. We were delighted to see that breakfast was not only really good, it really was very quick. The waitress was also the cook, and we suspect was also the owner. She did a great job in every role and was kind enough to quickly fill all of our water bottles with ice and water. In our minds that in itself makes any waitress great.
We had one or two really steep hills in the morning, but they were all pretty short. But as the afternoon continued, we tended to get more and more really steep hills. The steepest that Eric noted on his altimeter was a 15% incline. But on a few of the hills, Eric was going so slow that the incline didn't even get measured. We estimated those inclines were at least 75%.
Shortly after we turned on Tower Rock Road to head towards Cave In Rock we came upon a welcoming, incredibly nice, bicycle welcome place put out by a kind homeowner along the way. There was a bicycle stand, the ability to get water, and even a place to charge your phone. We were all very impressed.
At one point on our trip we decided to take a shortcut that looked like it would cut out two or three miles based on what Google showed us. However it turned out the shortcut wasn't quite as short as we thought because for half a mile the road was gravel and we met up with quite a few dogs in that neighborhood.
We also went on a little detour to visit Tower Rock based on the signs. However it turned out that the signs were great when leaving the main road but they weren't great when telling us where to find Tower Rock. We never did find it. However we had a great downhill ride that was really fun to race down. Regretfully to get back to the main road we had a very slow killer climb back up. So much for short detours.
We saw quite a few large brown birds that I suspect were eagles. We also saw quite a few deer, especially as we approached Cave-In-Rock State Park. This made me pretty happy as I hadn't seen any deer in almost all of Missouri and most of Illinois.
Dinner was at Kaylor's Restaurant at Cave-In-Rock State Park. Then once we had ordered milkshakes to go, we went for a walk to see the cave itself. It is quite impressive to see this Limestone cave carved out of the hillside.
Another great day comes to a close and it will be very easy for all of us to sleep tonight after all those steep hills. We are hoping the inclines are not quite so steep in Kentucky tomorrow, but I have a funny feeling I am dreaming about that.
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