Very early start for a long day of riding in Ozark. Quick PB roll ups breakfast. Surprised at the ease and flats out of Farmington, unexpected. Convenience store coffee stop and terrible waffle/sausage/egg sandwich after 10 miles; at least it's fuel for us, we don't have to always like it. Another convenience store stop after 15 more miles for Gatorade, ice cream, snacks, and added some Nuun electrolyte tablets to water, expecting a hot and hilly afternoon. Easy 15-ish more miles to Johnson’s Shut Ins State Park with a stop to lay on a picnic table to stretch/rest, take pics of butterflies swarming us, fill water bottles. After laying on the table, we found a tick on Vanesa...so we had to do a tick check on all three of us. This isn't uncommon, as there are a TON of ticks out here and we've pulled a few off Maui (Vanesa inspects her closely every day) and a couple off Vanesa and one off of me. YUCK, ticks are gross and scary. Past Johnson's Shut-Ins State park it got harder and hotter. The Ozarks are LEGIT mountains, relentless ups and downs, ridiculously steep at times, and every sweet downhill is followed by an awful uphill, awful enough that we're learning to DREAD the downhills rather than cherish them like we do out West. Just before Centerville it was super hot and we saw a gorgeous river so we stopped, took off our shoes and socks and went into the river for a while. We didn’t swim but we walked in flip flops in the knee-deep river and soaked shirt, hat, bandanna to stay cool when getting back on the bike. Our little doggie swam a little too but not much because current was a little strong and she didn't want to get swept downstream. Stopped in Centerville at the courthouse town square rest for 15 mins and a watter bottle fill, where we saw Joel when he came rolling in just as we were leaving. We told him our plans to continue on to Ellington and he decided to rest a little longer but then also ride to Ellington like we were, only 15 moderately hilly miles (hard though because of the heat), so we could stay in Chamber of Commerce hostel which they said provides a shower and 3 cots as well as indoor, air-conditioned sleeping. I lost my chamois butter tube on the ride because apparently I didn’t have it secured well enough and it fell out on a downhill. Damn it! That’s like burning $20, but even worse than that is that there are very very few bike shops out here and no other stores sell it. If you run out and you don't have lubricant for your chamois (the pad in your bike shorts), riding this many miles can be a very painful, abrasive experience. At least V has a tube now because we'd bought two of them in Carbondale IL a few days ago. We later found that that Joel passed it and saw it but did not pick it up because he was on a steep downhill and stopping on a downhill and going back uphill to pick something up (unless you dropped it yourself and knew it before you traveled downhill too much further) is just not something normally considered on these steep Ozark hills. Once all of us were at the cycle hostel, we showered and then all walked 3 blocks to a mediocre local restaurant for dinner, then next door to Dollar General to pick up some beans, cheese, and coffee (Starbucks frappuccinos) for the morning. The Chamber of Commerce cycle hostel was very, very humble, but we were grateful for a roof, AC, and shower. Turns out the cots were awful. Mine was too hard and I woke with hip and back pain after pretty poor sleep. Vanesa's cot was so saggy/torn that she got up and blew up her sleeping pad in the middle of the night and slept on the floor. But it had wonderful and thankfully loud (because it drowns out others' snoring) AC!! We are having a lot of fun riding in vicinity of Joel and hanging out with him in the evenings. Cool guy, former cop who's also run 5 marathons, was a Captain, and apparently his grandkids all call him Captain too. But like all cops, he doesn't volunteer much and kind of seems like he doesn't want to talk too much about policework; he opens up some to me though because he knows my dad is a former cop.