Sunday, July 12, 2009

27: Welcome to Kansas

Stoker's Log Day Twenty Seven

7/12/09

From Nevada, MO

To Iola, KS

60 miles

Nevada was a nice looking town by the light of day, with cheery storefronts, lifelike wall murals, and a town hall that resembled a castle.

So we started off in a good enough mood, even though we were headed into Kansas, the state we've been dreading since the beginning. We've heard many horrible descriptions from people who have traveled across it. It's not that the traffic is bad (in fact, there's hardly any) or that the people are awful (in fact, they're notoriously friendly, when you see them). But Kansas is known as "fly over country" for a reason: it is dreadfully boring to look at. People we know who drove across it complain about how mindnumbing their trips were, and we'll be toiling across it for days instead of hours. The less populated parts of Missouri had nearly bored us out of our minds, and by all accounts it was about to get worse.

Kyle faked a smile as Kansas welcomed us into barren prairies and tornado country.

Fortunately, our trip across the plains today was broken up by a visit to Fort Scott. It was a cheery Western tourist town, and we loved it. We didn't see much of the fort itself, since entering the buildings required money, but I was very content to wander the town. There was a lot to see, especially for Kansas.

We ate lunch at a diner packed with fun locals, then stopped by the fort entrance to ask the rangers what lay ahead of us. They were wonderfully friendly but bore unwelcome news: it would be many hours before we saw another building with a bathroom, much less a populated town.

We reluctantly got back on the very, very, very open road.

For the rest of the afternoon the only points of interest were a spider that had camouflaged itself against the guard rail reflector...

...and a silo tower covered in names; we joked that it must keep track of everyone who had ever lived in the area. Not that we saw any signs of a town, you understand, but we could just glimpse a farmhouse or two far off in the distance, and somebody had to be using the gas station that we detoured far down this road to find.

We were unbelievably relieved to finally reenter a slice of civilization, which in this case meant a road that had a gas station and several stores on it. I have developed a love of gas stations that I never expected to have. They have bathrooms, they have giant slushies, and they usually offer a shaded corner somewhere where I can lay down with a balled up shirt for a pillow and be utterly content. While I was sprawled on the ground at this particular gas station, a teenage boy and his mother, looking Kansan from head to toe, came over to ask me about the bike. They were so friendly and interested that I didn't mind being disturbed by them at all. Meanwhile, inside the gas station Kyle was seriously impressing a group of little boys with his cycling stories, and when they came out after him they were tugging on their parents' arms and pointing excitedly at us. I love the people here.

But I'm not so fond of where they live. We couldn't decide whether it was good or bad that not all of Kansas was as flat as its reputation; climbing hills in the heat, even moderately sized ones, is never fun, but at least they broke up the landscape ever so slightly. After some of the longest 60 miles I have ever ridden, we finally reached Iola, which was actually a fairly large town. We were so starving (and, I think, starved for the signs of civilization and commercialization that we usually hate) that we stopped at Pizza Hut for dinner and then packed up the extra breadsticks in the trunk and rode down the street to WalMart to buy what Kyle needed to give the bike a proper cleaning. As usual I guarded the bike while Kyle bought supplies, and in what is also becoming usual a slightly crazy WalMart patron struck up a conversation with me. She was nice enough though, and finally Kyle emerged with $1 little girl tights (to cut into rags), an equally cheap bowl (to catch the grease) and the smallest bottle of dish detergent available (which was still far more than we would need). We finally rode to the hotel and settled in. Kyle cleaned the bike, I took care of things on the computer, and we both fell asleep dreading the next day's 90 mile ride through the Kansan heat.

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