day 3 - welcome to the plains

Gray, misty, 45 deg all day.  an unexpected, but much welcomed, light tail wind and good, flat road made the cycling easy.  made it to great bend and a comfort inn. 85 mi.  feeling a little guilty, but warm and dry.  it rained lightly most of the night, everything is wet.  currently still gray and misty, but supposed to clear out and warm up to mid 60's.

i'll fess up to skipping cheyanne bottoms refuge.  i even turned on the road, but when i looked down that highway and thought of riding 7 more miles out there and then back, i couldn't do it.  sorry chris.

i've been lucky with the wind, so far, but today will change some of that.  15-20 mph with stronger gusts coming out of the south.  still not riding straight into it, but the crosswind, especially the gusts, may cause some problems.  the road is good, the shoulder is only 18-24 inches wide.  wasn't a problem at all yesterday, but the crosswinds may be an issue.

the traffic is not bad, drivers are well behaved.  50% of the vehicles are trucks, semis.  not the box trailers, but grain and produce trailers.  don't know what they're carrying, unless it's stored grains, but they're are a steady flow of them.  i passed a service shop that offered washing out wood chips from trailers, but don't know where the chips wood come from, there aren't many trees out here.  passed several large silo storage complexes.  one was doing a steady business with rail cars coming in, trucks heading out.  or was it vice versa?


cattle pastures are fading, wheat fields propogating. saw my first couple of amber fields.  quite beautiful with streaks of new green mixed with the gold.  don't know the difference between the green and amber crops.   in mcpherson, there was a huge underground gas storage facility.  complete with rail car loading.  stretched for a couple of miles.  natural gas.  fracking, apparently, but only saw one well.  don't know where the gas was coming from.  surprised to see a bunch of oil well pumps working,  not much storage capacity or activity, don't think they produce much anymore.   it was all going out by rail, long lengths of cars.  in ellinwood, those long train cars were being filled with grain.

well, time to start riding.


Comments

  1. UnknownMay 13, 2020 at 8:09 PM

    Thank you fir the drills. It helps picture the ride. Don't feel guilty as but the motel, we're too old for thats silly feeling. There will be lots of camping. I looked up a historical prarie farm near where u were day 2. Pretty scenery, rolling grass low hills. Rest up, Q

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