September 10 and 11, 2014
We lumped our day off in Hermann with our next day of riding from Hermann to Weldon Springs in this blog post. Actually the trail spur we took to our hotel was past the Weldon Springs trailhead at the end of our day on the 11th. Our morning of our day off was filled with walking 3/4 of a mile to the laundromat and Brian patching tubes. After the storms moved through the day before and overnight, it turned cooler, cloudy and looked like fall. We enjoyed some of the local food at the Hermann Wurst Haus that day. The owner has won 375 awards and has 60 something kinds of bratwursts. It was awesome and we even took some meat home with us.
The B and B owner had breakfast ready for us early (around 6:50 am), which was wonderful and we were able to get on the road by 7:30 am. It was cool, damp and misting. Brian ended up having a flat on a brand new tube before we even got back to the trailhead on the other side of the river from Hermann. It seemed like we battled flats off and on that day, whether it was slow leaking thorn holes or a tube with a bad valve stem. We didn’t complain about the weather being much cooler though. We had a long 52 miles on completely flat trail which meant a lot of peddling. Most of the day was spent with riders in a group of 25 who were separated over a 2 mile range. They passed us several times and we were able to visit with them occasionally at the trailheads. There were more through travelers with panniers like us than those who were just out for a day ride.
As we got just past the Weldon Springs trailhead we ran into Pastor Terry Roberts and his wife Becky from Faith Family in Warrenton, MO who were riding their bikes in the opposite direction. It was quite an awesome surprise and the last place we thought to meet anyone we knew, which really lifted my spirits!
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