Between enormous crop sprayer coops that stood a couple of stories off the road and had extendable arms going out up to 120 yards, and bearded men driving horse and buggies, we had interesting company on the road today.
I only know the enormous, tall tractor things were sprayer coops because the very nice woman who owned the frozen custard shop in Jamesport told us so.
Today we biked 89 miles east through Amish Country. It was an interesting contrast between the first 50 miles of farmland, tractors, sprayers, trucks and the land around Jamesport with horse and buggies on the roads and flat carts pulled by enormous draft horses sitting in yards.
Amanda at the custard shop told us there were around 1600 Amish in the Jamesport area. She grew up there and looks at her Amish neighbors as anyone else. Ahead of us in line was a young Amish man. As we were chatting after he left she told us that he already had 4 daughters, and only a year ago their house burned down with the family sleeping around the stove in the lower floors to stay warm. He barely escaped with one of the kids before the top floor collapsed in on the house. In a month the Amish community had dropped everything and rebuilt their home. It's obviously a community that looks after each other.
Beautiful ride today - rolling hills, corn and soybeans, pastures. A couple of mangy, bike chasing dogs kept things lively though I never had to deploy the water bottle squirt method of dog repellent.
And we had the best wildflowers I've seen yet. Huge fields of what looked like Queen Annes Lace or white yarrow. Yellow black eye susans. Purple thistle. Pink clover. Great purple flowers Bob looked up and identified as Chicory.
I had fun playing with photos to try and capture the color of the flowers with the green of the fields.
The roads were narrow, low traffic and rolling hills. Often no shoulders, but very fun and relaxing to ride on. As we head east there are simply more roads to ride on ... I was thinking of how much more anxiety there is riding on trafficky roads that you don't even realize you are managing until you are off them. It's like a burden off. A lot fewer flats, too.
Tomorrow we have what sounds like a beautiful ride north east to Kirksville on little county roads with tons of hills.
Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016!!
10 years ago
