5 June 2007

Cesky Krumlov to Milevsko
It seems we are just missing some pretty good rains. This morning was foggy and cool as we tried to navigate our way past town. We ran into a detour that we know would have taken us way out of our way, so we backtracked and made it through though we weren't sure we were on the correct road until we had gone 8 km's. Our route started out fairly flat but then the hills kicked in. Forty km's into the day we stopped in Netolice for a snack. Everybody seemed to be coming out this one small shop with ice cream, so we went in and found they had some nice bakery, too. Well, we had to try a couple of items and they didn't disappoint us. Just around the corner from the sweet shop we decided to get more cash and that's when John discovered that he must not have taken his card out of the last cash machine. We discussed how to handle the situation (Marie is carrying a different card) and continued on another 15km's or so and stopped in Driten for more fuel for the body. While eating an !
elderly man was intrigued by John's bike and trailer, so John had to show him how it all connected. Though he spoke no English and we speak no Czech, we managed to communicate quite a bit. As we continued on we rode through a nice area of small lakes and could see what looked like nuclear reactor towers off in the distance. It turns out that our route took us within a 100 meters of the 4 of them. Pretty impressive structures up close. The only thing separating us from them were a few rows of razor wire fencing.
The plan was to get to the campground in Veselicko and see how we felt. If we still had a few kms in us, we would go on into Melevsko and get a room to make tomorrow's long day into Prague a bit shorter. We went past the campground with just enough energy to get us the 8 more kms into Milevsko. Just our luck, however, there weren't any signs for any rooms anywhere on the main road. We wandered up a few side streets and saw nothing. We were amazed because it seems that even in the smallest of villages there was usually a room to be found. We asked a few people on the street and none seemed too sure, but a couple of them told us to go to the Sport Hotel. We managed to find it with some more help, but it was pretty run down and nobody was there. On the way we had passed a street sign that said "privat" and had a stick figure of a bed on it, so we stopped to check the price. It seemed a bit high so that's why we went on to check out the hotel. Well, eventually we sett!
led on that room and then walked and rode our bikes to two nearby grocery stores to get some dinner food. When we don't camp, we seem to become two very indecisive people.
Anyway, the room was very nice and had this bizarre staircase going up to it. It was metal and the steps were only about 6 inches deep. And where it made the turn they were only about 4 inches deep. It's a good thing there was a railing to hang onto!

Kms 98.76
Time 6:03:28
Avg 16.2
Max 50.9
Total 1325.3