45 mi, 411ft gain, 62-85F/light wind & sunny
When I walked out to start the ride today I was cold! There were small clouds and a breeze.. I’m not in the desert Southwest anymore. However I jumped the gun on the coat wearing, I was hot almost immediately. Coat be gone.
We again found ourselves riding on the shoulder of the same road we’ve been on for days since New Mexico, but the quality of the pavement is noticeably better! I had minimal rough pavement today and found the rumble strips to have 10 ft smooth sections to pass through as a cyclist on this stretch. Funny such a small thing can make such a huge difference!
We stopped in Hooker, OK for our SAG stop. Interesting little spot with a very cheeky woman working her little shop. She made me laugh and smile, she is doing life right! Oddly she reminded me a lot of my Aunt Dorothy with dirty jokes. I found myself more donuts, cause donuts are life.
The first half of the ride we had tailwind, we were rolling strong. The last portion it turned to more side/head wind but not as bad as we’ve seen lately. Overall an “easy” 45 was needed after so many harder days. We will be moving into more 80+ days to get us into our next rest day in Emporia, KS.
We are currently in Liberal, KS.. self proclaimed town of Dorothy and the Land of OZ. There is a small house built in 1907 dedicated to the historical museum there with art installations of the movie characters. It’s cute, I took some pics and rolled on to the Midwest Air Musuem.
Having grown up around airplanes and surrounded by pilots, this place was actually somewhat comforting to me. It felt familiar without having been there before. The little gift shop had F16 & F35 toys.. if weight wasn’t an issue I would’ve bought them. Apparently a man owned 50 of these planes and donated them. Proceeds of entry go to the city of Liberal! I was pretty surprised by that. Since his passing there are double the planes at this location. The majority are inside the hanger but outside there are 6 larger ones.
Headed to Dodge City tomorrow. After that we will “Get the hell outta Dodge,” and make our way through Kansas for 4 more nights.
Total mileage to-date:
1,317.7 miles
Total elevation gain to-date:
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