It wasn't much more than a year ago when the Butterfield Stage Experience was just a glimmer of an idea mentioned in a regional trails planning meeting.
This spring, when the idea the routes starting coming together--to link 8 Missouri counties and over a dozen communities via a gravel bicycle route following the historic route--and those of us planning the route go so excited about it that we were driving ourselves and our bikes across the state just to try out one segment or another and make sure it really worked, we realized we had the first 250 miles of the route ready to go.
Why not release it and let people start to ride it and and enjoy it.
So we did.
But up until now, no one has ridden the entire 254 miles of the Butterfield Stage Experience, completely and end to end.
Now Warsaw cyclist Jenn Bradshaw has become the first--of many, we hope!--to ride the complete route.
Here is her story:
