thevcblog: KATY Ride Day 7 - Hermann to Defiance

It turns out Hermann is a pretty cool town.

This is not an old Radio Shack sign that they never got around to taking down. It's real.

Hermann has a historic district with many cool old buildings.

It was settled by Germans, and it still has a strong German heritage.

Like Kolaches!

After this fantastic breakfast at the Espresso Lane coffee shop.

Them it was back across the river to the KATY trail, where the scenery is beautiful and services are few and far between.

There are a lot of combines and tractors out harvesting the corn and soybeans planted in the floodplain.

There was a tavern open in Marthasville for lunch, Cori's Twin Gables. It's on the other side of the athletic fields towards the river.

The cheese curds were fantastic. As for the wings, we are pretty far from Buffalo.

We ate on the deck outside, because inside there were tons of people smoking. I was surprised by this, but then I remembered that they sell liquor in the drug stores here.

There are lots of people riding the trail end to end, and you see and talk with many of the same people when you stop for breaks at the trailhead shelters. Most of these people also had lunch yesterday had lunch where we did in Portland, and also saw the woman sitting at the bar chain smoking and drinking beer all afternoon with her toddler in the stroller. It seems that scene left quite an impression...

Art appears a bit after Marthasville.

The butterflies on the side of the quarry are gigantic. There are some teeny tiny people at the base of the wall if you look closely.

Tonight we are in Defiance, which is a very small town alongside the trail. We are close to St. Louis now, so Defiance has places to eat, and a craft brewery, and a distillery. The brewery is also an event space, and there was some running event today that ended there. So they had a big crowd and an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. After that we visited the Circle 6, a dive bar. Here's the scene at the brewery:

The beer was quite good. We're still in an area of German influence, so they had some good German varieties, including a Schwarzbier, which was outstanding.

Lodging was weird tonight. There are no nearby hotels. There are lots of expensive B&Bs. We are at a bunkhouse, which is an AirBnB. It's relatively affordable, and it's the cheapest option, but it is very basic. We have a small room with a bunk bed, in a building with 4 such rooms. There are no common spaces, but there is a Keurig machine and a water cooler in the hallway. Bathrooms and showers are in a shed next door. It's clean and nice, but I sure wish there was a place to sit down and drink my coffee. And it's a real pain in the neck to climb down from the bunk, put on clothes, go next door and figure out the key code to use the bathroom in the early morning.