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Day 39 - July 16 - Nickerson, KS to Newton, KS - 53 miles Click on the thumbnails to view larger pictures.
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| Kansas has the straightest roads we've ever seen. It
must be that when the engineers originally laid them out they just took a map,
drew a bunch of east-west and north-south lines on it, and then went out
and paved them. Yesterday and today we would ride east for miles,
turn and go south for 10 or so miles, then back east again for a
ways. This zigzag course was not a problem except the wind was coming strong out of the south.
When we zig south we're riding into a
headwind. Riding south would totally wipe us out, but then we'd
zag back east again and somewhat recover. By the time we got to
Newton today we were zigzaged out..
With a population of 16,700 Newton is one of the largest towns in Kansas we go through. With the increased population comes lots of services we're not used to having, but along with that comes lots of traffic and noise. They have a real nice park (with swimming pool) in the center of town, but it is adjacent to what seemed to be 50 humming grain elevators, at least 6 sets of busy railroad tracks, and roads on all four sides. Walden, CO was vivid in our minds (check Day 30) so we opted for a motel room on the other side of town instead of another sleepless night in a park. While on our way through town a guy in an SUV flagged us down. He had passed going the other direction just a few minutes earlier and gave a big wave, so we just thought he was a cyclist wanting to hear about the trip. It turned out he was a worker on a construction site up ahead and stopped to tell us we couldn't get through. He gave us directions on how to detour around the site and then drove to each intersection and waited for us to make sure we went the right way. He did this until we were back on the route again. Just another example of the great Kansas hospitality we've been experiencing. Dinner this evening was a rotisserie chicken with potato salad, macaroni and cheese, 3 bean salad, pasta salad, and coleslaw that we got at the deli in Dillon's Grocery. It was one of the best we've had so far. |
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