June 9, 2007
This week’s story in Full Circle’s 2007 Summer Travelogue series has to do with a Baby Boomer couple who have set out on a brave and ambitious journey to visit all 48 of Missouri’s State Parks by tandem bicycle.
They are encountering everything from floods to flies on their bicycle built-for-two, but the picturesque scenery along the way makes the hardships worthwhile, the Stewarts say.
Their bicycle-jaunt around the state might seem like a Herculean task to most of the over-50 crowd, but not to this couple. Dennis and Geri Stewart of Higginsville, MO, have already pedaled their way cross-country three years ago. This summer’s adventure is literally “a walk in the park” for these two empty nesters.
Dennis is a retired advanced life-science teacher and track coach at William Chrisman High School and Geri hails from Independence. However, before we talk more about their summer state park tour, consider what these two have already accomplished.
On April 5, 2004, Dennis and Geri began a 253-day journey that lasted the better part of two years on and off taking them on an unsupported transcontinental journey of more than 4,500 miles. They began at Cape Disappointment, Washington, at the mouth of the Columbia River and culminated their journey at the Atlantic Ocean in Yorktown, VA.
The name of their 2004-2005 journey was dubbed the Packs Paddles and Pedals Triathalon Tour. They used three types of transportation as the expedition’s name implies: hiking (Packs) canoeing (Paddles), and bicycling (Pedals).
The Packs part of the adventure closely followed the return trip of the Lewis and Clark expedition and finished within 10 miles of where Lewis and Clark left their canoes at Camp Fortunate in 1806.
After hiking more than 800 miles, Dennis and Geri exchanged their backpacks for a canoe stored in Dillon, Montana, and began a float adventure of more than 2,400 miles. The Missouri River has changed drastically from the river that Lewis and Clark traveled 200 plus years ago. The Stewarts had to worry about portaging around dams and paddling several hundred miles of dammed river water with no helpful current.
After traveling for months by water, the Stewarts exchanged their canoe for a tandem bike stored in St. Charles, MO, and began a bicycle ride of more than 1,300 miles to Virginia. On this leg of the trip they visited Monticello, home of President Thomas Jefferson who gave the original directive to Meriwether Lewis on June 20, 1803, to explore the Missouri River and follow it and other waters to the Pacific Ocean. The historic trip had as its objective finding a water transportation route across the continent.
Are you tired yet?
If not, check out this website for one of the best travelogue reads you will ever find. You can locate it at http://www.ctcis.net/ppp/ppp.php. Dennis and Geri kept a daily log of their Triathalon just like Lewis and Clark did on their journey. There are scores of breathtaking photographs on the site for you to enjoy as well. I guarantee you will not feel as though you have wasted a single minute.
If you are positively not tired yet, consider Dennis’s other amazing feat. This one began on July 4, 1991, and lasted 30 days, 10 hours, and 51 minutes. Dennis and four others, the High Point Hoppers as they called themselves, set out to climb the highest point in all 48 contiguous states in the U.S. They succeeded and landed themselves in the Guinness Book of World Records to boot!
Since Dennis and Geri have had awhile to recover from Packs, Paddles & Pedals, they are fresh with energy for this summer’s excursion to six-regions of Missouri State Parks. The first trip took them to northwest Missouri for 10 days from April 20 to 30. On that leg they visited Watkin’s Mill, Weston Bend, Lewis & Clark, Big Lake, Crowder, and Wallace State Parks.
From May 15 to May 21, they traveled, by bicycle of course, to four more state parks. These included Long Branch, Thousand Hills, Pershing, and Van Meter as well as the Indian Cultural Heritage Site.
The Stewarts leave in mid-June to visit another region of Missouri State Parks and hope to complete their entire expedition by late fall.
Watch for them on the back roads, they might be pedaling along and singing to that grand old tune “Daisy.” You remember how it goes, “You’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built-for-two!”
Or maybe not. At any rate, we wish them favorable tailwinds.
