Saturday 17th July 2004

66 miles, from Larned City Park to Ness City, City Park. A pleasant road for Kansas - just gentle undulations. Contrary to what people say, Kansas isn't at all flat. It is either undulating slightly, or else a tilted plane - i.e. you are climbing as you go from East to West. So we keep going up a few feet. By the time we reach the rockies we'll be at c. 5000 feet. That's not flat... Visited Fort Larned - National Historic Site - basically a 19th Century fort in a bend of a river, well defended against Indian attacks, and defending the Santa Fe trail that took goods to Santa Fe - the Spanish trading post of the time (seems to become American after some war or other!). Never a huge place, but the barracks could cram in over a hundred soldiers - sleeping 4 to a bunk bed. The tent suddenly seems more spacious. The surgeon got a very nice house to live in, and there were some alarming instruments displayed (the usual amputation saw, blood-letting razor, etc, etc). A very nice looking piano too! Met Lynda and Larry from Seattle at Fort Larned - they offered us helpful comments on the road ahead - including ideas about how to get from the coast to our aeroplane at Seattle.

We met an Oregon cyclist later on - Tony - who suggested other routes too! Tony was on a racing bike pulling a Burley. We saw a massive storm ahead, the storm was heading south so we missed it. You can see Tony and a corner of the large storm on the photo! Turned out that the storm hit Ness City and closed the swimming pool early - so even if we'd been on time (which we weren't) we wouldn't have got a swim. A headwind developed which slowed us still further. Went through the little town of Alexander - which has, just after the town, a very very impresssive toilet, with Alexander carved into its marble lintel. Finally got to Ness City, rejected the Motel as too expensive and so ended up in, guess where?, the City Park. Ate at pizza place where we met a couple doing the transAm on a tandem. They also intended to camp in the City Park. Mark and Wanda, they said, are about 50 - 60 miles ahead of us. See their Web Page.