Two Girls, 4 Wheels: Day 29 – Adapting to Life on the Road

July 19
Summersville, MO to Hartville, MO
61 miles

Another hearty meal at the Trailside Restaurant and we set off for more of the aforementioned rolling pastoral farmland. En route, an hour-long, entertaining roadside chat with Art of Longview, WA and Doug of Bend, OR ended with the “ceremonial” handing over of Halt dog spray from us Westbounders to the Eastbounders. Although we continue to encounter the occasional snarling dog, attacks are much less frequent this side of Berea, KY.

Tonight’s accommodations: center stage of little Hartville where we pitched our tent on the shady lawn of the county courthouse. To access the restrooms we only had to walk past the jail cells and through the work space of the deputies and sheriffs who were quite friendly about the invasion.

Our new itinerant lifestyle has sparked various creative survival adaptations. We’ve learned to be on the lookout for power sources to repower our electronics any time we’re off the bikes. When we’re in restaurants we always choose the table next to an outlet and have become pretty savvy about other outlet locations. It turns out that park pavilions and utility poles often have electrical outlets and between our various sources we manage to stay charged most of the time. ML is a master at finding free wireless service; sometimes this is as easy as sitting down in a café with free wi-fi, but more often involves walking around the perimeter of town parks searching for unsecured “neighborband” from houses abutting the park. K has gotten quite adept at spotting small packages of free condiments and salad dressings at convenience stores that we use to liven up our camp cooking. We now top off our water bottles whenever we have access to a water source and are running out less often. When in a restaurant, we’ve learned to ask to have our water bottles refilled with ice water, and the staff is always happy to do so. Perhaps the most difficult thing has been figuring out what to cook for dinner under these conditions: one pot, no refrigeration, no way to store leftovers, and often very limited selection of ingredients in the stores. Pasta is easy, but we’ve gotten pretty tired of that over a 4-week period. Shopping takes an inordinate amount of time as we wander from aisle to aisle pondering what to cook tonight. We’re still learning and experimenting with bike-touring cooking and hope to have a solid repertoire of dishes mastered by the end of the trip. Or not.

It was a shame to have to turn off from the road to Success