And on the 66th day, we rested.

September 5th, Rest day in Harrodsburg Kentucky. Sorry it's been so long since our last update (Boulder Colorado, 4 states ago!). I can tell I've been on the road awhile because (1) I don't really remember what it's like to be home and (2) my hair has reached this really ridiculous (thanks for the spelling lesson, Derek) length of about 2 inches, but when it's clean, it still sticks straight up in the air. And I think I'm making all the old ladies jealous. They all wish their hair could have this much volume, this much pizzazz.
From Boulder, we made our way SE using a route designed by Dena to meet up with the TransAm trail in Eads, CO. That was a tough couple of days because of the Northbound wind directly in our faces for hours at a time. Scenery in this region included fields of corn and sorghum a square mile in size, a grain elevator in every town, and ginormous feed lots. Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas looked remarkably similar, and we kind of blew through them, despite the headwind. Dena left us in about central Kansas, and we ended up biking a total of 10 days and about 800 miles from Boulder before crossing the border into Missouri. By this time, the farms were getting smaller and houses and trees became a more regular site. The terrain also began to get a bit hillier and things began to look a bit more familar as my East Coast Senses began to tingle. Brick houses, lots of greenery, colonial style mansions, etc. 30 miles after the KS/MO border, we arrived in Golden City, MO. We had heard of this town before. After being disappointed by the one chance we had to try a taste of the famous homemade pies of Kansas, we met a cyclist from Sacramento heading from Yorktown to Sac via the TransAm and Western Express trails (which continues Westward from Pueblo, CO through NV and UT to SF instead of northward to MT). This man told us tales of a wonderous place, with streets of gold, kind people, and a diner (Cooky's) with the best damn homemade pies money could buy. Well, he didn't mention the showers in the city park...and once we learned of that, we were hooked. This little town of about 350 people was to be our home for our first rest day since Boulder! Due to the small size of the town, that sunday was the first day since July 2nd that we didn't touch our bikes. We just ate at Cooky's, took a nap, read, and even went to church, for which we got all kinds of praises from the senior citizens of Golden City. Complete relaxation.
At that time, we calculated that, at the rate be had been going (80 miles a day on average) we would be able to make it to Yorktown, VA (and the Atlantic Ocean) in 19 days, and if we took 2 rest days, we would arrive on Sept 15th. So that's the plan. Since Golden City, we've biked 9 days, and here we are, in the oldest permanent white settlement West of the Appalachans. We kept up our goal of an 80+ mile average, and even did 100 miles a few days ago (just for kicks...). The terrain in Missouri was pretty tough through the Ozarks, with lots of short but exceedingly steep hills. But, wow, it is beautiful... The hills got progressively better through Illinois, and Kentucky has had generally fairly gentle terrain with some hillier sections. From here, we have 10 days at 80 miles per day, but the hills will progressively get steeper and steeper as we make our way into the Alleghenies, cross into Virginia, and then on to the the dreaded Blue Ridge (these are the two ranges that make up the Appalachan Mtns.). After about 5 or 6 of those ten days, we should be out of the mountains and into the gently rolling terrain of the Virginia Piedmont and Tidewater regions. And we're going to blast into Yorktown and right into the ocean (or at least the brackish waters of the Chesapeake Bay).