Making Hay (before the sun shines)

After the past 3 days of stifling headwinds, we set out today's plan to deal with it in the best way possible.  First, our plans for the day were conservative.  Seeing as how we made 72 miles yesterday and we were pretty spent, we didn't plan anything too aggressive.  We had a bail-out spot, a planned spot that wasn't really that attractive, and a stretch.  Second, we did our best to get out early to get a head start before the worst of the winds were scheduled to appear.  

Still looking a little stormy - somewhere

We left the strange, kind-of abandoned, town of Dighton as fast as we could this morning.  The Heritage Hotel was a bit creepy, not many things worked, but we were happy they were there at all.   A lot of things in Dighton apparently are not.  Camping would have been a very wet affair last night, as it rained pretty hard. We stopped at the Quik Mart and picked up some coffees and pastries, and a couple of sandwiches because we had no idea what services lay ahead.  We headed out the highway before 7AM, trying to get in as many miles as we could before the inevitable headwinds kicked up.  One nice thing today, being the 3rd of July, was that truck traffic was low.  A few cars, but most long haul trucks were probably idle for the holiday weekend.  We did see a few, and I noticed the propane truck headed toward Dighton as we left town.  The really nice thing was that the sun was still hiding behind a lot of clouds.  Shielding us from the hot sun could be a good thing if we wanted to make our goals today.

The strange lobby of the odd Heritage Hotel in Dighton

Immediately Jerry and I went into the same rhythm we've been at for the past few days, rotating front and back every mile-marker.  The nice thing was that, despite the reports, the headwind (yes, of course it was in our faces) was more like a head-breeze.  5mph or less - enough so that in front you could feel it, but it wasn't too bad, and behind you could definitely appreciate the protected position and get rest.  For the past 3 days we would rotate and count the numbers of pulls we were doing, simply to motivate and get through these rotations.  Today, with a lighter wind, we quickly lost count of the pulls since it wasn't really a motivating factor.  We could even talk to each other and hear each other, which hasn't been the case for a while.  For the past few days, each rotation was like being a galley slave - stroke, stroke, stroke, but today, it was actually kind of pleasant.  Further, the miles clicked away at a pretty good pace.  Our snack stop was at Ness City, and we stopped for a quick Gatorade at a gas station/convenience store.  We spoke with a couple of local people, who are always curious about where we're headed.

So that was 24 miles in before 9AM; so far, so good.  We got back on the road again, without real plans for a lunch stop.  We figured we'd just stop somewhere between 11:30 and 12 so as not to let the tanks get empty and begin to fatigue.  The late morning seemed to keep to the plan of the early morning.  The sun still hid, at least for a while, and the winds weren't too bad.  By the time we arrived at a lunch time, we were practically at the place we had scheduled to stay. We had gone through Bazine, where we had seen a very large sign stating "Christ Pilot Me" on the side of a hillside, and now we were headed through Rush Center, which really seemed to be just a cross-roads of two highways.  

A local landmark in Bazine, KS

We found a Sinclair convenience store gas station at the corner, and went in and found two cold bottles of chocolate milk, the next best thing to a full-on milkshake.  We bought them and a snack and planned to find a shady spot somewhere.  The owner said that we could stay in his store if we'd like, and eat at one of the few table booths he had at the side.  We did so, with thanks, as it had begun to get a bit toasty outside.  It turned out the owner also works as a truck driver early mornings, and had been delivering propane to Dighton this morning and saw us there.  He also owns the store, and also farms some property nearby.  Busy people around here, doing what they have to to make it all work.  We talked a bit more, and then a few locals came in (this seems like a place where locals wander in and out a lot), and they were doing a raffle drawing for the local volunteer fire department.  They had sold raffle tickets to win a pair of shotguns, and we were there for the ticket drawing.  Imagine in Lakewood if they had a raffle for some guns - that might be kind of interesting.  The conversation quickly turned to the shotguns - they were side-by-side, which seemed to strike a couple as odd, a bit old-fashioned.  Most are apparently up/down.  We stuck around for a little while, but eventually had to hit the road again.  We asked if we could fill up our water bottles and they had a sink with filtered water instead of the normal city water.  I dumped out the rest of my bottles right away and filled them to the brim with filtered.  The city water we've been drinking has been pretty foul-tasting.  Worse when it gets hot.  Thank you kindly!

Gun raffle in Rush Center.  I would have called it a rifle-raffle, but they were for shotguns. 

The nice thing was that we had covered all but 28 miles of our stretch target, and it wasn't much after noon.  We figured that if it got horribly windy, we could still make it.  The nice thing was that it DIDN'T get more windy and we were able to hit our stretch city by about 3:30PM.  How amazing, after a few days of horrible wind and hard work for every mile, we were able to hit over 90 miles, and do it in a shorter time than we planned our conservative target.  Imagine what could happen if we had a tail-wind, like we did a few days ago (alas, for only half a day).  We could be in Missouri in no time.

We made it to Great Bend, KS, right past the great bend in the road, and settled into the Super 8.  Unfortunately, Super 8's are typically in the big box store side of town, so we looked at our dinner options as chain, chain, chain, or chain.  We did a bland dinner at Applebee's, and headed back to do some laundry (thanks Super-8) before retiring for the night.  

Not many photos today.  Once again, each field looks like the last.  At least, as we get closer to central and eastern Kansas, it is starting to green up, and the fields look green by default, not only where they've been irrigated, like eastern Colorado and west Kansas.  It's looking a lot more like the Midwest I know, and we're seeing more cornfields and not just wheat and cattle ranches.  

Tomorrow we have a conservative and a stretch plan, to either Hutchinson or Newton, KS.  Being the 4th of July, we have no idea if anything will be open, so we need to be a bit flexible.  It looks like either destination could work for us.  We'll see what the wind has in store for us tomorrow.

We rode 95 miles today and climbed 1,408 feet, a lot for Kansas.