day 46

today we went from pittsburg, kansas to ash grove, missouri; yes we crossed over another state today making it our 5th state accomplished! wahoo. we got up and headed to the grocery store to enjoy fruits, yogurt, and some cereal then we hit the road. it was literally like 5 or 10 miles out of town when we hit the missouri border and we almost missed it cause the sign was so small! it was at windfall charlie's, whatever that exactly is, and there was a fireworks stand there so we had the lady take a picture of us. missouri is the show me state, what does that exactly mean? not sure on that. leaving kansas and hitting missouri, we left the headwinds and the flat straight roads and started hitting the hills. it was a bit of a brutal shock at first cause there was some intense hills where you got to the top and then it levels out, it didn't just drop down the other side, then you had to climb to the top of another one, and then another one. very tiresome for our legs that were used to flatness. so we did a lot of up and down riding wondering if it would change, it doesn't (that's from the future me). it's hot and more humid here so that makes riding even more awesome :) ha (i think that might be the first smiley used in these blogs). we came out of this random small road and hit the freeway to kansas city so evan took his classic legs over the edge pic and could've spit on the semi that passed under him. we finally rolled into ash grove and chatted with the gas station attended who was answering my questions before i could get them out (he did not answer them in the order i asked them). we tried to hit up the library but it just closed but we met up with a cyclist from scotland and we chatted with him for a bit then went to the grocery store to find some food for dinner. we hadn't cooked in awhile so we decided to cook up a stew with hot dogs, beans, and beef stew. we found the city park and plopped down at a covered picnic table and started making our crazy concoction. sadly i don't remember the scottish guy's name, but he shortly arrived and we started swapping stories and telling of upcoming awesomeness! then up rolled two more cyclists, a guy from oklahoma and his girlfriend (sadly i can't remember their names either) she was from delaware. so all of us sat around and just talked till super late, it was so much fun. we then called it a night and retired into our tents.