Wind, Rain, Trucks

Jim, Cheryl, and I were sleeping in the Sterling city RV park for the night. I woke up once to a red fox screaming, which sounds like a human gone mad, as I recently learned. If I hadn’t known it would have kept me up, but i went right back to sleep. Then at 10 minutes before our alarms were set to go off, I woke up again to a train a few hundred feet away shaking the ground. It came right past our tents and sounded an incredibly loud horn, then dragged it’s long carriage through. I made sure “so everyone’s still asleep after that right?”. Natural alarm clocks are nice.

That days ride was one of the nicest and painless of the trip’s. We stayed on highway 96, as we’ll be doing until Pueblo. We passed through Quivira National Wildlife Refuge with a tailwind, and it was just incredible scenery. The thing that stood out to me was just the color palette of the environment, including the human made additions. Everything was muted pastels; yellow and green grasses, blue-grey sky, and charcoal road. The one element of contrast were my bike companions with their bright clothing and gear.

The blue-gray sky I mentioned just now; That had been growing gradually darker throughout the day. Eventually some details emerged in it and we could see the stark system in front of us taking up most of the sky ahead. I put on my rain gear and then sped up. Soon we were in the storm, though it was mostly still just around us, so the rain wasn’t heavy.

A few miles in the rain and we made it into the town of Larned and met Tom and Jane anyway there just finishing breakfast at a cafe. We joined in and agreed to cal it a day, even though after the tailwind we didn’t feel particularity tired, and could have maybe done lots of miles. We got some rooms at an inn, did laundry, shared some beers, ate Mexican food, and retired for the day.

The next morning it was raining again bit we grabbed our gear and biked out of town, out from underneath the clouds, then turned right, continuing bike alongside the system. It was cool to look over every once in a while and see what was happening with the huge saucer shaped cloud. Kansas lends itself very well to viewing the weather systems from afar, with its low horizon.

Some base sections of a windmill turbine passed us on huge trailers, led by a car in front with flashing lights and a “wide load” sign to tip is off that we’d need to pull off the road a bit. The machinery and their movers around here are amazing.

After a rest in the small town of Rush Center we continued and were passed by even more machinery: this time grain harvesters. These were very wide, and usually required pulling over. Though, their truck drivers were very responsible and patient with us, so it wasn’t too harrowing.

We took a break at a dusty gas station and met David, a biker doing about our pace along our same route. I had actually said hi to him briefly a few times, a week before and a day before. Now or group and him are traveling closer together and keeping in touch. He likes to scout out each town we end up in, which is nice to get some knowledge in advance.

Soon enough we made it to Ness City. The city park was available to camp in, bit was lacking bathrooms, so we got another motel room, at the Derrick Inn Motel, an interesting place that ended up having at least one bedbug… so instead of getting my first night sleep in a bed in a few weeks I slept on the concrete in the indoor courtyard area… Unsurprisingly I got an awful sleep was grumpy this morning. We’ve been checking our clothes and have not found any hitchhikers.

Today’s ride was straight west on 96, And there was not much between us and our destination of Scott City other than wind the first stretch, the town of Dighton to get lunch and rest, then sunny flatness for the last stretch.

Jim and I were at a gas station reading longer than 5 minutes after entering Scott City when a pastor named Kyle came up and asked if we had decided where we’d be staying tonight. We told him we hadn’t, and he informed us that his church had just started taking in traveling bicyclists. Wow! In a town of over 3000 people, he was the right one to cross paths with!

So, we’re lounging around in our large living area for the night having showered and relaxed, and we’re very thankful to be out of another large lightning storm above is doing its thing! We’ll likely get food after it passes.

We have three more moderate days of riding ahead of us to get to Pueblo. Colorado is within sight! (Metaphorically, even though you can see things from very far off around here).