Day 26: More Kansas
Today started with 19 miles heading South. Thats the way the wind blows, South to North. After asking around town we figured our best bet at low winds was leaving early in the morning. It turned out to be a pretty beautiful ride. Our solar radio was playing hymnal music sung by a choir as we regarded this sunset and these cows.
As the sun continued to rise and we continued to ride, we found the word around town to be true. Right as we were getting to the end of our Southernly jog, the wind started to pick up and give us a hard time. Thankfully we turned east.
And ended up here! At a National Historic Fort. Fort Larned served as a defense for the Santa Fe Trail. We've found that Kansas does a nice job of preserving its history. This place seriously looked brand new! After being tourists for an hour it was back to the road. It was really nice to get a taste of something different after seeing so much of the same for so long.
A few shots from inside:
It didn't help we were in a cloud. Speaking of clouds, Jon was on cloud nine when he met two of his favorite actors! Unfortunate about After the Fort we came into the town of Larned where we met plenty more friendly Kansas folk. The people in this state have been nothing but sweet like tea to us. This picture is a good example of the treatment we get. Sometimes we feel like celebrities!
Luckily the day cleared up as we made our way up to Monarch PassThese 60+ mile days of no services are getting old, so it was good to have the company of some friends when we got into town this evening. Only a few more days of Kansas left.
DAY 27 Rest Day
What I'm about to say may be counterintuitive to the title of this post: we went 50 miles today.
We were planning on going 107, but stopped in Newton for a quick pop in a bike shop. What we found in the bike shop blew our minds, so we stayed.
Today is a day of rest, so I don't want to spend too much time on the blog, i'm already up past my bedtime, but here are some pictures.
We slept beneath the stars in Weber Park. We didn't use a tent because we didn't need it, and it is faster to go in the morning if you don't have to pack up a tent.
We stopped at the gas station. Surprisingly enough we weighed ourselves today. Jon has lost 15 pounds, and I've lost 11 in the last 26 days.
This is the couple that runs the bike shop! Super awesome and generous.
Jon and I both ordered bike-washes, and were super impressed by their tactics.
We both got new handlebar tape and choose to go bold!
Tomorrow we want to get 90 miles in as we approach the border of Kansas.
We have a pretty good thing going on with editing together some footage. We hope to upload that soon. The trick will be finding a strong enough wifi signal. Hopefully tomorrow we can!
DAY 28 Snakes on the Plains!
On day 28 we rode 105 miles from Newton, Kansas to Toronto, Kansas.
Here we are leaving The Newton Bike Shop, after going to a Mennonite breakfast buffet. Chris had 5 cinnamon rolls. They were quite delicious.
Jon decided to take out his contacts because they were hurting him, so he has been rocking glasses for the last 2 days.
After 50 miles or so we stopped by a cafe in Cassoday, the prairie chicken capitol of the world.
We stopped to get some potato salad at this old cafe.
Below are some of the previous owners. It was first built in 1860 and has been a restaurant since the beginning.
20 miles later we went to Rosalia and met Linda!
This is grandson's 4H fair goat trophy. He raises 18 goats, and they are all superstars.
We were warned about "hills". This is a picture of one of these "Kansas hills."
These 100+ mile days make muscles need to be stretched.
The sun set.
We ended in Toronto, Kansas and stayed at the home of Any and Andrea. They were just about the nicest people ever!
Hobo was just a pleasure too.
They had a fire going when we arrived, and had hotdogs, home-pickeled pickles and tomatoes, chips and all sorts of things for us to eat and drink.
On day 29 we went 92 miles from Toronto to Pittsburg Kansas. It was supposed to rain all day.
Red sky in the morning, sailor's warning.
This turned into a thunderstorm shortly after this photo was taken. It soaked us. The pre-storm was beautiful though.
We stop by these kinds of stores 5 times a day for a quick tea/gatorade/water-refill.
I was expecting to see armadillos in Nevada. We saw 0 in Nevada. I've seen 9 armadillos in Kansas. All of them have looked like this:
Jon and I decided to get a motel tonight because it supposed to thunderstorm all night, and there is a tornado warning in the adjacent county.
The genius I am, I was doing the elementary backstroke in the pool and over estimated the size of the pool. I slammed into the wall. You can see the 2 vertical dotted lines of if you look closely. Those lines are are lines between the tiles of the pool.
Kansas was has been by far the least exciting state. Even though there were severe thunderstorms, we were quite excited to make it to Missouri.
On day 30 we left from our Comfort Inn room in Pittsburg, Kansas. Our goal was to go 117 miles to Marshfield, Missouri. This would prove to be the most difficult day to date. The day included constant rain, many severe thunderstorms, 30 mph winds with 60 mph gusts (10 miles going into the wind), a flat tire, dogs that tried to attack us, a tornado warning and 2 hours of riding in the dark (the lightning proved to be valuable at that time.) All this in a 116 mile day. I'm not trying to be dramatic. I know I'm being dramatic.
It was rough, and we hesitantly welcomed the changes in elevation. The rolling hills would get steeper and larger as we went deeper and deeper into the state.
Taking pictures proved to be difficult with the constant rain. Basically, it was up, down, up down, small town, town, cows cows cows, wind, and the like.
There was a brief reprieve and a beautiful rainbow appeared! Then the sunset and rain came down. When times are tough and morale is low, we turn on this AWESOME speaker my wonderful GF got us for the trip. On the left is the device, on the right is one of the songs we listened to as the rain drizzled down.
The flood light on my bike lit up the rain in front of us so that it glowed white and looked like snow. It was so thick that it felt like we were riding through a warm blizzard.
That whole Paul Simon album was perfect. The song Run That Body Down just happens to be especially appropriate.
This is us around 7:45 pm. It was dark. We were exhausted and mentally toast. We started on the road at 6:20 AM, and still had 16 miles left. It was rough.
This lovely lady named Cheyenne was the nicest person we've met at a gas station all trip (and we've met over 100). She also put our coffees on the house! The coffee was a HUGE help.
When we came into town we met Rosie. Rosie is our favorite person in the world.
Rosie is our favorite for a lot of reasons. In no particular order: A) She is quicker than a whip. More than a couple time did she tell us jokes that took us a minute to pick up on. They were rapid fire, and hilarious. B) She seems to be an expert at everything. C) She grows grapes and makes wine! D) Super duper hospitable. To say we were taken care of would be a terrible understatement. E) Many other things. She is just a super lovable person.
2 years ago Rosie accidentally locked herself in the cellar. She was in there for 2 days. She told us she had neither food nor water, and when someone came by finally she rushed to make it to the 7PM mass at the Catholic church. When she got to the church at 7 she realized the mass was at 7:30 so she ran to Steak and Shake, got a hamburger, and made it back in time for 7:30 mass.
At this point, the camera started flickering and the screen went green because of all the water throughout the day. I thought it was toast. I kept it next to the de-humidifier all night.