Ben’s dad & brother, Ralph & Tom, are flying out to join us in Maine today! Only a matter of hours til they’re here so back to Colorado!
Day 61: Oatmeal & coffee, packed up by 8am, stopped by the grocery store in town, then back on the road. A lot of nothing today, rolling hills, good shoulder for the first half of the day, tons of wheat, pretty hot – 100 degrees! There weren’t many places to fill up water so we stopped at a woman’s house in the town of Last Chance (haha, how fitting) & she gladly let us use her hose. We rested here for a snack, hid from the sun for a bit, then rode another 20 miles to Anton. This place had a small grocery store, Supers, with a shaded picnic area. We got a few things from the store then chilled for a couple hours at the picnic table to avoid the heat. We played cards, read, napped (or tried to), & chatted with a farmer who stopped in for a bite.
After our break in Anton we rode the remaining 22 miles to Cope – our planned end point for the day, however, it wasn’t what we were expecting. Google lied! We thought there’d be a grocery store & a few other businesses here but there was nothing. It was a pretty run down, forgotten town. All businesses were no longer open. Some people still lived there but it looked fairly abandoned. Luckily, there was an overgrown park with a picnic shelter to pitch our tent under (rain looked promising), pit toilets, & a water pump. I wasn’t too worried about setting up camp in such a visible area as it seemed there weren’t enough people around to care if we were there. There was a telephone pole in the park with outlets that, after playing around with switches, I was able to get working. Wahoo, we could charge stuff too! This dud of a town was still providing everything we needed. Sweet! Unfortunately, we hadn’t planned our fuel very well & ran out of gas within seconds of turning the stove on. Whoops! No hot meal tonight or in the morning but we still had plenty of food to eat. We had snacks for dinner (crackers, nuts, bars, beef jerky for Ben, bagels) & prepped overnight oats for breakfast.
In a race against the setting sun & impending storm, we quickly did dishes, laundry, & bathed. Bathing was interesting but still satisfying enough – combination of crouching under the water pump & also utilizing the pit toilet ‘room’ to clean up. After being drenched in sweat all day, any form of bathing felt much better. We were in the tent early as the storm came. It was really pretty to watch it approach. The sky was full of bright pinks, purples & blues. It was so windy but other than that the shelter kept us pretty dry. After a little reading, we were asleep by 9:30pm.
Day 62: Up early, finished charging things while we ate & packed up (had to stop last night due to rain). Beautiful sunrise this morning. Before we left we took a spin on the rickety merry-go-round. That was fun…but we also felt a little nauseous afterwards! On the road by 8am. My legs were feeling tired today. Ben felt great – I couldn’t keep up with him! After riding for a while we stopped at Carpenter’s Mini Mall convenience store, next to The Grainery restaurant (the only two buildings for miles in the middle of nowhere). We rolled in around 10:40am, the restaurant didn’t open til 11am, so we just hung out at the convenience store picnic table & chatted with one of the employees, Janice, for a bit. She was so nice & welcoming…very different than the store in Anton yesterday. Janice wants to do her own bike trip someday in Argentina so she had lots of questions for us. Once The Grainery opened we walked next door for lunch & hung out for a while to avoid the heat (in the 90s today). I blogged, Ben read.
After lunch, we only made it 7 miles before pulling over to explore an abandoned farmhouse. This was pretty cool! Unfortunately, while we were exploring, my bike tipped over & I lost all the water from one of my bottles & my shifter got a little jacked-up. Luckily, I still had two other bottles of water & my shifter just needed some heavy cranking to get back in place. Another 9 miles after the farm, we finally crossed into Kansas (state #6!), then another 14 miles to our final destination: St.Francis.
Fred connected us with a buddy of his, Colin, who lives here (just moved in a week prior) so we pulled up to the house & as we were unloading met another cross-country biker staying in town for the night, Bill. He’s heading in the opposite direction as us but it was fun to swap stories of our experiences & the things we’ve learned so far. We met Colin (one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met) & his roommates/coworkers. They’re all here, in the middle-of-nowhere-Kansas, for this technology Colin created that can detect pests on crops & involves 3D printers – cool! He showed us around the house then we walked down the block to get groceries…& lots of ’em! We were apparently pretty hungry & shopping at a time like that is dangerous! We walked in for dinner fixings (salad & pasta) & breakfast (eggs, veggies & cheese), but also walked away with chocolate milk, cottage cheese, pickles & ice cream (seems like a pregnant woman’s shopping list, but I assure you – especially you, Mom! – that it was not; just 2 hungry bikers). Back to the house we devoured the jar of pickles, juice & all….mmm, salty & delicious!
There was a big, new community pool basically in their backyard so we wandered over to take a dip. Open swim was closed but for $1 we could swim laps – deal! I just needed to be in water so my laps were more frolick than swim but nobody cared. Aaahhh, it felt great. Just what I needed on such a hot day. Quick shower, dinner, laundry, charging, reading, & finally bed. Despite not having a ton of extra space for visitors, Colin & his crew were still willing to make room for us & we were so thankful they did. Sleeping on the floor in a house with AC beats sleeping outside on a hot, sticky night.
Reflections
1. As soon as we left Aurora we entered endless fields of wheat, as far as you could see – wheat, wheat, wheat,wheat, wheat. It was like an ocean of gold – really pretty.
2. The staff at the Supers in Anton were very unwelcoming towards us. I don’t know if it was a ‘you’re not from around here’ sort of thing or something else but they seemed annoyed with our presence & any questions we had. Oh well, not everyone is going to like you & they’re entitled to their attitudes.
3. With such long stretches of the same, single color view with no end in sight for 15 miles in any direction, I weirdly felt claustrophobic. That sounds strange since I was outside, in a wide-open space, with nothing around me but it felt sort of Truman Show-esque, like I was trapped in a small world.
4. Holy cannoli, now that we’re on the east side of the Rockies the flies & mosquitoes are so bad, especially on our ride from Byers to Cope. Any time we stopped they would annoy the living daylights out of us. It was impossible to nap outside with the constant swatting you had to do. Breaks while riding were short to minimize the annoyance by those aggressive pests! Haven’t missed those little buggers 🙁
5. A week off in Denver was great, but also made us a little soft. Riding so many miles again, in the heat, left us feeling zapped in no time.
6. The sunrise in Cope looked like a neon grapefruit – very vibrant pink & orange. It was so cool & mesmerizing! Pictures wouldn’t do it justice.
7. Being in the middle of nowhere, you’re able to notice more since it’s quieter. I didn’t know crickets chirped all day & I love their sound. The call of a mourning dove (which I just learned isn’t morning dove…), not so much. They sound sad, depressed, bored…which now makes sense that they’re called mourning doves. Wow.
8. Janice wanted to do a big bike trip despite not currently being an avid biker. That’s what I’m talking about! We weren’t either but we figured it out. Don’t let inexperience hold you back from trying something big. You’ll miss out on a lot of great opportunities if you wait til you’re an expert at something.
9. There were moments of riding through the land of wheat, where it was mostly flat with just enough incline to not be able to see further than a few miles. There was nothing on the horizon but the tops of wheat fields against blue sky – it looked bizarrely like the edge of the world that we would inevitably fall off if we kept going – except the edge of the world always stayed just a few miles ahead of us 😉
10. Crossing into Kansas was a little funny because since we left Denver it already felt like we were in Kansas with all the wheat fields. Eastern Colorado is completely different than the western side & is indistinguishable from western Kansas. When we crossed the border I found myself thinking “wait, I thought we’d been in Kansas for 3 days now!”. Haha, nope!
62 days down, 70 to go – hot diggity, I’ve got some catching up to do! My eyes need a break from my phone screen first so I’m going to clip out for a bit before jumping back in the saddle. Until next time!
Whitney