Saturday, October 15, 2016

Biking Through Missouri Wine Country

Today we went biking down the Katy Trail State Park between Defiance and Augusta, Missouri with Joel and Wing. This is wine country which provided plenty of opportunities to stop for wine breaks. 


The Katy Trail is a beast. It is 240 miles long and runs along what used to be the route of the the former Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad. Wikipedia: "The nickname "Katy" comes from the phonetic pronunciation of 'KT' in the railroad's abbreviated name, MKT."





I don't like wearing hats but apparently the sun, which gives life to every creature on the earth, is also trying to kill me personally with its evil, evil rays. I'm showing my displeasure by letting this hat get as dirty and disgusting as possible. Take that, heavens!


We had some initial technical difficulties with renting the bikes, and when we finally got a hold of a couple the lady at the shop just told us to take them. No paperwork, or ID/deposit, or really even getting our name and phone number. I thought that this was some quaint small town charm but we found out later that the lady was just an overwhelmed temp and that's not how things were supposed to work.








The weather was gorgeous so everyone and their mom was also out on the trail and at the wineries. We were still able to get served and find tables wherever we stopped though, so no big deal.




It was at the Yellow Farmhouse Winery in Defiance, MO that Joel revealed a terrifying secret. He'd only had wine a few times prior to today. Oh hell no. We had an emergency wine tasting.


We lucked out and our tasting was led by the owner of Yellow Farmhouse, Dale Rollings. This guy not only knew everything about the wines, but would digress onto these awesome tangents about the ice ages' effect on the earth in Missouri which made it perfect for grapes, prohibition, and sailing a boat all over the world. He was generally just an awesome dude that I would like to be one of these days. The wines all seemed to have cool names with backstories. This Compass Rose rosé is named after his favorite bar in San Francisco.




Wines were drank, bikes were biked.

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