It was an all-American first for us to
wake up in the shelter of a baseball field. The morning air was crisp
and we had slept well in the open breeze and entirely without insects
(local folk have told us its' too hot for mos-quitos!) Matt got stuck
into bike maintenance while I cleaned Katys' dust from all our gear.
Joe, the Janitor from the Civic Centre shyly came over with a huge
bag of ice for our water bottles. We couldn't understand his
uber-local drawl much and he couldn't understand our 'not from around
here' chatter, but we got by with big smiles.
Repaired, we were back onto the open
road; the shoulder of the highway. Thankfully, Sunday easily has the
least traffic all week, so it was a gentle transition from the
tranquility of the Katy trail. However it was also fairly
unremarkable, so this blog is likely to be a short one!
One thing of note was that we have
found ourselves regarded as almost-equals amongst Harley riders.
Every bandana-clad biker that purrs past gives us 'the finger'
salute...That is, an amicable raise of the fingers on their left hand
as they pass us. We two-wheelers stick together; us in our lycra and
bike helmets; them in their leather and usually helmet-free. We later
learned from our Kansas oracle, Barbara, that making motorcyclists
wear helmets would be regarded as an infringement of their rights.
You say tomato, we say tomato; you say infringement, we say
preservation... Each to their own though.
At one point we took a parallel running
unpaved road as a highway alternative. We couldn't get back on the
highway fast enough after a few miles of increasingly trecherous
coarse gravel. Traffic is the lesser of two evils; it doesn't risk
busting your skinny road bike tyre.
By all accounts, Kansas if flat but we
managed to find the hilly entrance to the State. We were on a long
uphill climb as we passed a meek 'State Line' marker by the roadside.
After a rare wrong turn and resulting detour/'scenic route', we
finally rolled into Osawatomie. We had chosen the tiny hamlet of
Osamatonie as our destination is that it is the start of the Katy
Trails' Kansas equivalent; the Flint Hills trail (also a rail to
trail conversion.) Stopping at 'the' gas station for Gatorade, Matt
asked the gap-toothed attendant whether there was a visitors' centre
in town. She squeeked 'In Osawatomie?! -You're looking at it!' So we
asked her about the bike trail -well, she didn't know anything about
that. Anywhere to camp? -There's a park, but you can't camp in it..
Theres' a motel in the next town, Paola (we had passed signs to 'the
next town' about 20 miles ago and had no intention of back-tracking.)
Thankfully, another customer stuck her beak into our fountain of
local knowledge. 'Theres' an RV park at the end of this road, you can
park there!' So we thankfully took her precise directions and headed
off.
We reached the RV park and it was like
a ghost-town for nomadic ghosts. Not a soul to be seen. There were no
other tents as a guide of where we may set up. So we decided to have
a ride around town to find the mouth of the trail. This was equally
unsucessful and the few locals we could find didn't know about any
bike trail, but luckily an old guy could direct us to the old
railroad. We found it via the convenience store. More of an
inconvenience store; as the attendent wouldn't sell us the beer we'd
selected from the fridge 'Can't buy beer on Sunday – not in
Osawatomie!' Cheers. The trail was a few miles out of town and we
realised we needed to stock up on water, so we took a long driveway
to a farm to ask if we could use their tap. Like the RV park, the
farm was deserted. Perhaps everyone was in Church, or a pub in the
next county. We filled our bottles using the Spigot in the garden,
hoping they wouldn't mind.
The Flint Hills trail is a few years of
rivalling the Katy trail; it is overgrown and lacks any signposts,
still we enjoyed the tranquility. Without the anticipated maps
showing us where we might find a campsite along the 120 mile long
trail, we cycled blithely on for about 15miles. By this point it was
dusk so we decided we would have to free-camp for the first time in
America. It is land of the free, right? So we found a flat spot by
the trail and set up camp, happy that the only furry forrest friend
that could disturb us in Kansas is a racoon (at least that we know
of!)
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