Kansas City - McPherson KS - 190 miles, 2 days

 

2950kms, Burgers 75, days 30 (Riding days 24 - average 122kms - 76 miles/day).

Pizza Hut - Osage City, Kansas
70 miles so far today, we left Kansas city late this morning, after our last Bob Evans Breakfast! - Bob Evans is a chain of Breakfast shops, and we were lucky enough to be given a gift voucher by the manager of one in Owensboro, Indiana. We had to use up the voucher by the time we left Kansas City because there are no stores west of Kansas City. The breakfast was great, and it was a good ending to a fun time with Tony and Stacy, who we have been staying with.
We have managed 70 miles as I write this at 6.30 sitting waiting for my massive pizza in Pizza Hut. They have a special deal - you can have any size pizza, with any extra toppings all for $10. We have gone all out on this, and apparently our pizza has to be cooked twice because it has so much stuff on it. Looking forward to it.
We will carry on until it gets dark, getting as far as we can before putting up our tent in a quiet spot. We plan to wake up at 6 tomorrow, because it is so much nicer riding early in the day: it has been around 30 degrees for most of today.

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We camped last night in a random field - and got almost every bit of stealth camping wrong. We left the road at 8.15 - as it was getting dark, but still too early - it only got completely dark at 9. We tried to keep heading in towards the tree's, and ended up by a swamp with no place to set our tent - then, Alex remembered Tom's warning about Poison Ivy - possibly slightly too late - it was all around us... Not sure if we've been stung, but will let you know if everything starts hurting. We then just chucked the tent up in an Ivy free spot, and hopped in very fast, so that the swamp's vibrant insect life didn't disturb us any more.

As we were going to bed, a coyote started howling very near at hand - with little ones yapping away - so Alex quickly stuck the leftovers from our huge pizza in thedry bag and hung it up.

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We set off at 6.45 this morning, and managed 22 miles by breakfast at 9. This has been our earliest start by a long way, and made a good start to what was to be our longest day so far. We were headed to McPherson, KS, where we are being put up by Courtney and Dave, friends of Tony and Stacy. Our plans to do a 105miles in a day took a hit when we only managed 18 miles in 3 hours after breakfast. This was because of huge headwinds when going south, gusting at 30 mph. In the midst of these, my only hopes were of Kansas reverting to a sea, and my bike changing to my Laser (sailing boat) - it was tough. We then ran out of water, and when we eventually found a spot to fill them up - found a WW2 Vet with an antiques store, who very kindly gave us water and a free book. The Water wasn't drinkable however - too much sulphur, so we searched and searched along the route - looking in all the cow trough's for taps, until we finally found one in a deserted farmhouse.

We eventually rolled into McPherson at quarter to 8 after some late afternoon lunch, and some helpful winds later in the day.
We plan on heading to Scott City for Wednesday, we aren't sure where we'll end up tomorrow. Wifi is sparse, but cows are abundant - the plains of Kansas look just like a much bigger version of the Maasai Mara, with Black Angus Cows instead of Buffalo, and pick-up trucks instead of Mini-vans. Very tired, 108 miles (as it turned out) is not a small feat, and it took us 9 hours of riding time to complete - which means that now I have been awake for 18 hours, therefore - bedtime.

We are on track - tomorrow we should pass the line marking the centre of America. (not an actual line - but a few cities claim to be right in the middle, and we will pass close to them.)