We said good bye to our personal peninsula shortly after sunrise the next morning. There was little breeze and already it was nice and hot! But it was a really pretty spot and we were a little sad to leave.
As it implies from the title, we did a substantial amount of non-paved surface bicycling today. This wasn't planned. But it was a learning experience. Turns out Google Maps doesn't differentiate between paved and unpaved roads. We cycled about 15 miles on well packed, gravel roads.
We have not been recording our routes with the iPad GPS since coming into Kansas because of the flat terrain and to save the battery. However, despite the fact that we keep telling ourselves that Kansas is perfectly flat, the terrain has been becoming more and more hilly as we get closer Missouri. We turned our GPS on for about five miles in order to capture some of the terrain:
We stopped for breakfast in the little town of Melvern. Very yummy and it was a nice break from the heat after our first 10 miles of biking for the day. A flashing bank LED sign informed us it was 96 degrees and 9am.
The biking went by surprisingly fast today; I think this was mostly due to the concentration we had to spend watching where we steered our bikes on the hilly unpaved roads and concentrating on going up and down and up again!
The scenery alternated between wooded areas with creeks, and extensive agricultural fields. The main crops we've seen in Kansas are hay, corn and soybeans. Can't forget the cattle, as their fields play an equal part in the landscape. The cattle and horse always watch us as we go by, I don't know if it is because they are just terribly bored or have never seen a bicycle before.
We stopped for a cold drink at a gas station outside of Williamsburg. We talked to a group of older men who were in for a cold drink as well. They all had boots, jeans and cowboy hats. They told us we chose a good place to stop as the stores in Williamsburg we either closed for good or not open today because it was Monday. We talked about our trip a little and as the conversation came to a close, one tipped his hat and said "Ya'll remember Williamsburg".
Despite the heat, we've picked a beautiful time of year to explore the United States. Everything is in bloom and the fields are usually lush and green. Wildflowers cover the sides of the roads: yellow cone flowers, a white flower that looks like baby's breath, sun flowers, red trumpet vine, some purple flowers and even day lilies.
As we have been getting closer to the Missouri border, more and more of our breaks have been in the shade! We just have to be careful as many thickets are full of poison ivy.
We arrived in Osawatomie around 6pm tired, hungry, and looking for an escape from the heat. There were not many places to choose from that we could see. In the end we stuffed ourselves of Pizza Hut's chicken alfredo dish complete with breadsticks. Yummy.
We headed back to the city park, John Brown Park, and got stuck by a train. A very long train. All of the towns we've passed through in Kansas have train tracks either running on the outskirts of town or right through the center. This was the first time we'd actually had to wait.
We made it to the park eventually, and found a picnic table in the shade. We read until the sunset, waiting for the temperature to get a little cooler. Even at night it still remains in the upper 80s or 90s. We took showers with the Ortlieb bag again and the cool water felt wonderful. Finally it seemed cool enough to sleep and we crawled into our wonderful little tent and passed out.
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