Saturday August 27th and Sunday August 28th Ness City to Great Bend, Kansas

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 farms or fuel. Period. That's the message. That's what goes on here. 

                                                                                  ( This sign was in a local convenient store in the town of Rush Center)

Let's see...Lisa got a flat tire on Friday. I got one on Saturday. Betsy helped me change mine. She's nice like that. Our hands were a mess, but my bike is usable again. Yay!  We changed the tire next to a historical marker about George Washington Carver. Very intelligent man. 

Lots of wind around here. Yup. Especially the later in the day that you bike. I keep thinking of the witch on Auntie M's bike...peddling away and not moving much. "I'll get you my pretty!" Or something like that. I feel that way as the day drags on...Speaking of the weather, we have been super fortunate with the weather so far. Not too hot, a little bit of cloud cover so we don't get sunburned. Actually today was the first day that the temps reached 90 degrees. Oh, and It rained last night in Ness City and we even saw a rainbow! You would think we'd never seen one before the way we celebrated! 

Let's see...aside from the flat tires...a rainbow...a turtle...sunflowers, flat flat flat... we continue to be easily amused. We took a small trip to the Jerusalem Badlands. That was really cool...do you see a gecko?

Speaking of food (surprise!) we continue to make as many meals as possible. Even when we are at a hotel and only have a microwave.

Even in Air B n B's when you have a full kitchen it can be a challenge. Paring knives? Probably not. Wanna mash potatoes? You might have to make due with a wisk instead of a masher. Last night we had Shepherd's Pie.

Sometimes there are kettles, but no lids. We make due, no big deal. Tonight Betsy made us West African Stew. It was awesome!

Oh yeah, Lisa found a very cool restaurant in Ness "City" yesterday. It looked all but shuttered from the outside, but the inside was beautiful. Score! We had Margaritas, guacamole and chips.  It was excellent !

When we left the restaurant, it was obvious that some foreigners were in the neighborhood...

(In my defense, there were no other cars here when I parked AND there are no lines on the pavement)

...so tomorrow we are heading further east into: Kansas...did I tell you about Kansas? It's flat. We are going to leave route 96 behind. It has actually been a pretty nice road: 

decent shoulder, smooth and not much traffic. Stay tuned for more pictures of grain elevators and such. 

And to end today's post...a lovely photo of the sunset in Great Bend tonight. 

Bonne nuit!