It was a little warmer this morning that the past few mornings, but still cold enough that we would need our full warm gear on. After packing up, we headed off to find the grocery store in town. Upon finding it, we got our cereal and milk and were, as usual, hoping to see some tables inside to eat at. Sure enough, over near the deli/bakery area of the store, there was a whole group of tables. That always starts our day off so well when we get to eat indoors. The table we sat at was near a rack of books. We had fun looking through one of the "Joke books" as we ate. The one joke still makes me laugh every time I think of it: The lifeguard told the mother to make her young son stop urinating in the pool. "Everyone knows," the mother lectured him, "that from time to time, young children will urinate in a pool." "Oh really?" said the lifeguard, "from the diving board!?!?" There were quite a lot of funny jokes in that book, but we laughed the hardest at this one. After a laughter filled morning, we headed off into another headwind. A hill to get us out of Marshall and then more flattish land for a while. We stopped at a gas station at one point for a quick break and a nice lady started talking to us asking about where we were headed, etc. It still amazes me how simply traveling like we are opens the door to meet and talk to so many people. I never would have imagined that a loaded down bike could serve as such a portal for conversation to start, but it really does. We have met, talked to, and stayed with SOOO many more people that we ever would have dreamed of if we were doing this by car or bus. Meeting so many people as we go is probably my single most favorite part of bicycle touring. It really is just such a cool thing. You just never know who you are going to meet or what your day is going to bring. I love this so much. After our break, we started climbing into the mountains again. This time, it was a much longer climb that the ones we've done lately. We probably climbed for almost 3-4 miles. There was snow on the sides of the road in the areas that the sun couldn't reach to melt it as well as frozen water on the rock cliffs next to the road. It was beautiful. At one point we also saw a waterfall off in the distance behind a bunch of trees. When there were no cars going by, we could hear just the sound of our breaths as we climbed and the relaxing waterfall in the background. Joey of course reached the top long before I did. I had to stop a couple times to shed some layers because between the climbing and the sunshine I was just boiling. When I finally got to the top, I saw Joey relaxing on the picnic table at a gas station. He's too funny; he just made himself comfortable since he knew I would probably take a while longer than he did. From there, we rode along with a great view before another downhill to a little town that had an Antique Warehouse that had "the largest inventory in the USA." It definitely looked like that could have been true as they had 10 buildings packed full of antiques. We took a short break there since we were really hungry after all the climbing. We had only done a little over 20 miles, but it was very slow going. At that point we just felt like we weren't going to make it anywhere today. We had a little snack of Nutty Butty bars and were on our way again, headed for Clinton. Another few hills to climb in between, but a nice downhill into Clinton. We took our lunch break there and almost thought about going to Pizza Hut again since there was one in town. But, we knew that since we just went out we really didn't need to go out again. Instead, we spotted a laundry mat nearby that had a picnic table out front. It was warm enough to cook outdoors as long as we could get out of the wind, which we could there. Going to the laundry mats has been a real life saver lately. Protection from the cold, a bathroom usually, sink to wash dishes in, and usually a table and chairs of some sorts- what more could we ever need? We made some pasta for lunch and made a couple calls home. A quick stop at McDonald's to check the email, and then off to Wal-mart to get a Voila meal for dinner. These dinners have really become our favorite thing to eat now. It's cold enough that we don't have to worry about it going bad if it thaws a little, and they are full of chicken, pasta, and veggies. Easy to cook, they use hardly any water to cook, and it's a very easy meal to clean up. Love these- thanks to our friend Kelly for showing these to us way back before we left on the trip. While I was in Wal-mart, Joe ended up talking to a guy for quite a while. As usual, he asked about our destinations, miles, etc. Before leaving, he gave Joey 2 big boxes of granola bars and a box of fig newtons. The guy did some kind of work with that type of food, so he had quite a bit of it in his car. It was just so nice of him! Now we have granola bars- and REALLY yummy chocolate covered chocolate chip ones included- to keep us going. More hills and climbing for the rest of the day. We had hoped to make it all the way to the town of Damascus by the end of the day, but we weren't sure if we would if the climbing continued. At one point it started to rain a little, not pour, but enough to get everything wet. As we were getting to the top of a hill an SUV pulled over in front of us. The guy got out and asked where we were traveling to and from. It turns out that John, is a cyclist and is actually a member of Warm Showers! There were quite a few hosts in the Little Rock area and probably because he lived in a suburb of Little Rock, we did happen to contact him (originally we thought we would be further down the road and it would be perfect to stop right in Little Rock). After talking for a while, he gave us his contact information and just like that, we have a place to stay tomorrow night!! It's amazing when things like that happen- it still is just hard to believe it sometimes. Not a minute after John pulled away, Joey noticed he had a flat tire on his front wheel. He mentioned that he thought his bike felt weird going up the hill, and kept looking at his back wheel (since that is the one that is usually flat), but didn't notice anything out of order. So, we pulled off the road into a parking lot of a restaurant and began changing the flat. That pretty much took up a good portion of what daylight we had left. Once the flat was fixed, we headed down a pretty long hill. What a view- the big mountains were gone and we could see for quite a ways. As we were coming down the hill it was getting closer and closer to being dark. As we were flying down, we saw a guy dressed in dark clothes weaving all over the shoulder as he was walking down the hill. Joey had to slow way down to go around him since the guy was walking all over the place. As that was happening a guy in a truck pulled over on the side of the road right in front of me, so I had to stop in the middle of the downhill. There was so much traffic on the road at that point that I had to stop behind him to wait for an opening in the traffic to go around him. The guy in the truck picked up the weaving walker and then passed us as we were back rolling down the hill. When we got to the little "town" of Bee Branch we saw that same truck pulled over in a parking lot and the driver on the phone. Joey said he saw the "weaving walker" walking towards the woods. We just couldn't figure out what possibly could have happened for a guy to pick up someone and then drop them off again about a quarter of a mile later. Since it was almost dark by that time and we knew we had about 7 miles left go get to our hopeful destination for the evening, we decided to call it quits where we were. There was a lot of traffic as we are getting closer to Little Rock, so it wouldn't have been as safe for us to ride had it gotten any darker. We found a church that had a front porch with a roof on it that we could set up under. Since it had rained off and on this afternoon, we knew the chances of it raining tonight were pretty good. We got all set up and snacked on some of the granola bars that we had gotten for dinner since we didn't need a full dinner with having such a late lunch. It was SO nice out. We were able to sit outside of our tent for a while and enjoy the "warm" temperature. It was probably only in the 40s, but since it hasn't been that warm in a while, it felt like summer. As we were sitting there eating our granola bars, we saw the weaving walker go by heading out of town. About 2 minutes later, a cop car flew by with its lights on and pulled over behind the guy. The cop was there for a while and then next thing we knew the cop car and the weaving walker were gone. We sure did wonder what was going on! At least we had some entertainment to go with the warmish weather we had. We didn't make it nearly as far as we wanted to today, but since we have a place to stay tomorrow in Maumille, it will end up being a good distance tomorrow for the day. We rode 42.12 miles today.
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