3000 miles

Day 40: 80 miles - With some weather moving in last night, we were debating whether to sleep under the pavilion or pitch the tent. We ended up opting for the more comfortable tent-on-grass option. At about 1am, all hell broke lose. We had the most intense lightning, heaviest rain and strongest wind yet. After about 45 minutes of holding the tent up from the inside, the storm finally passed. I was really relieved and promptly fell asleep. At about 7am, the same the happened all over again, just with stronger wind. After this one passed, we crawled out of the tent as a lady that keeps an eye on the park pulled up. She said the we had clocked the wind at 75 mph and that the 3 inches of rain we had gotten over the course of the night had flooded several roads. With this news, we just hung out in Fair Grove for the morning and finally rolled out after the storm around 11:30.

We also ran across another ACA group that was doing a supported tour as well as a father-son duo from Morristown, TN.

Once we got riding, we had a nice clear day with a pretty decent tailwind. The rollers also weren't as severe as yesterday, so we covered the 80 miles to Houston, MO pretty easily. This afternoon we rode along the top of a plateu leading us towards the Ozarks with some really nice views off of either side.
We antcipate tomorrow being one if our hardest days yet with about 80 miles of big rollers pretty much the whole way. The elevation profile indicates a few of them being around 400 feet tall before dropping directly into the next on, so we'll just have to see how it goes.

Oh yeah, we hit 3000 miles since Astoria today.