Our Epic Bike Adventure

Our stay at Great Bend was lovely. I did have a weird experience outside. I was sitting at a table alone in front of the house contemplating the universe around 9pm when 4 rabbits came flying around the corner of the house toward me. I jumped right up out of my chair and yelled. Not sure what that was all about. I decided at that point to contemplate the universe alone inside of the house. The rest of the night was uneventful= we all slept well.  The morning routine went fairly smoothly. We actually were on our bikes by 7:25! We took the back streets as far as we could until we made it to the edge of town. More grain elevators marked the town's outer limit.  We crossed the Arkansas River. The river looked dreadfully low. And then the highway began. The shoulders were the widest we've seen yet. Awesome. We saw our first Armadillo. Unfortunately it was dead. We noticed lots of road kill, which seems to be par for the course when you cross animals with 18 wheelers going 70 mph. F...

Well, it's all starting to be a blurr.  Pueblo, Ordway, Sugar City,  Eads, Sheridan Lake, Tribune, Leoti, Scott City, Dighton, Ness City, Bazine, Alexander, Rush Center and finally, today, Great Bend. I keep thinking that there will be some thing to stand out in at any of these places. I mean, many of them are called cities. They don't look or act like cities. But is seems that we are still in Kansas after 4 full days of riding and that's that. Flat terrain. Roads that you can see down for miles! Amazing! And sadly, like many places in the world, signs of a former lifestyle that is no more. There are huge silos (called grain elevators here in Kansas) in every little town. That's how we know we are coming to a town actually. In many cases, there is nothing else there at all. Today I watched a 50 car train slowly pull up to a grain elevators in the town of Alexander. Also, Oil Field Pumps are scattered randomly along the countryside as well. It seems to me like it's f...

Crossing our 6th state border together! Today we left the plains of eastern Colorado for the plains of western Kansas.  Not a lot of difference in the two except the roads in Kansas are smooth as silk.  We left the bumpy chip and seal of Colorado behind.  We had decent shoulders and very little traffic.  A comfortable cloud cover protected us from the sun.  And wind.......strong wind.  On a sailboat it would be called a beam reach and would be ideal.  On a bicycle it is better than a headwind but feels nearly similar in effort.  It's only redeeming value is that it keeps the cyclist cool on a hot day.  The winds in Kansas are relentless.  We witnessed many a dust devil develop over the fallow fields and tumble weeds tossed our way. First stop was Sheridan Lake (after passing through the sad town of Chivington where Col Chivington ordered the massacre of peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho people in 1864.  Seems like karma prevailed as the...

  We are back! after a much needed rest at the beautiful mountain home of Sue and Lesli in Evergreen (talk about wonderful hospitality) and a mountain top adventure in the San Juan Mountain cabin of Pete and Betsy (talk about being high..........up on a mountain).  We have lost the companionship of Lauran, Stephanie, Sue and Lesli.  We will miss each of their unique contributions to our travels.  We will miss Stephanie's tech expertise and total enthusiasm about each new adventure, saloon, and early morning departure.  We will miss Lauran's wonderful sense of humor, perseverance, and shopping advice.  We will certainly miss the expert sag operation of Sue and Lesli 😢 and their ability to make us all laugh. We decided to sag down to Pueblo to begin phase II.  As you can see from the photos, the elevation has dropped considerably.  Sue sister says we should all feel like Wonder Woman pedaling on the flats after crossing the continental divide ...