I rose early that morning and left having said my goodbyes the night before. A mile away was the store I’d been waiting on so I popped in there and had a cup of coffee and refreshed myself. I’d talked just a little bit with the guy who ran the place there and when I went to pay he told me not to worry about it. Missouri was panning out to have the hospitality of the south, despite everyone telling me the further north I go the less I’ll see of it.
Having gotten an early start I wandered a long ways that day. By two in the afternoon I reached my 15 mile mark and it was right by a place called Bonnie’s Moo Café. I stopped in and had a scrumptious cheeseburger and more coffee while getting some writing done. I chatted with the waitress and some customers there a bit as well and felt right at home. Still feeling like resting I got a piece of lemon pie that was excellent before leaving.
I figured I wouldn’t go that much further, but at the same time I was still very much in the mood to walk. Step by step I meandered another three miles sort of lazily appreciating the countryside as the flat lands had picked up and rolled into the foothills of the Ozarks. A truck pulled over after a bit and the guy inside yelled to me if I liked my breakfast buffet yesterday. I asked if he was the guy from there and we got chatting.
It turned out he was the guy working on the lawn who I’d asked about Woodard’s, not the guy who covered my meal, but I didn’t find that out until about two days later. His name was Shannon and he told me of a nice place to camp out up ahead by an iron bridge in the Mark Twain Forest. He also gave me his number and address and told me to look him up when I got into Farmington. We shook hands and I set off for my new goal, the bridge.
About three hours later I had passed straight through a whole county and had covered about 26 miles. It was still about 7:30pm and the bridge finally came around a bend. It went over a wide beached little creek that the sign called a river so I set up on the little pebbles and made myself dinner. With a storm flickering lightening beautifully to the south I figured I’d set up the tarp now for an expected storm. It was then that I realized the little bungees I’d gotten in Mentone that I last used two nights earlier outside Cape Girardeau were still dangling four in a row on a tree branch. I rigged something with the rope, adding a mental note to get more, then went to bed.