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Day 28 – Ness City to Larned

Posted by Alan on Fri, 2nd Jul, 2010.
Filed under: Kansas

Fri 2nd July 2010

We had hoped to go further today but past Larned there is a 58 mile stretch with no services. So we are here tonight and for now we are actually where we had planned to be.

Camping in the city park at Ness City last night was not great. Because the 4th July is this weekend lots of people are having early celebrations, letting off fireworks, shooting and generally making a lot of noise. So we were denied a quiet early night. In addition it was extremely hot, too hot to get into a sleeping bag, a bit like sleeping in a sauna. I can’t believe that 2 weeks ago we were freezing our whatsits off in Yellowstone.

Ness City Park - Our campsite

The first 13 miles today were heading due East with the wind on our right as it’s been for the last few days. At Rush Center we turned right off Highway 96, which we’ve been on for over 300 miles, onto Highway 183 and headed due South directly into the wind for the next 20 miles. This turned out to be one of the hardest 20 miles of the ride so far as the wind was blowing between 20-30 miles an hour right in our faces. That was a long three hours!

Before we did that we stopped at a very small cafe on the junction of 96 & 183. We needed water and in the cafes they will fill your water bottles for nothing (with ice), and give you free iced water to drink with your coffee, which is always refilled. So it’s much cheaper than going into a shop to buy bottled water. This particular cafe is run by an 86 yr old lady and at 2:00pm today she was closing until November (she always takes the summer off). Some other customers in the cafe donated a plate of cookies to us and the cafe owner informed us that she gives all cyclist their coffee etc for free. So that turned out to be a really good stop. Some people here are exceptionally kind.

Great little cafe at Rush Center

At the end of that stretch we turned again and headed East into the town of Larned. Despite the difficult 20 miles we still arrived there by 2:30pm having only done 68 miles today. We bought our food and headed for the campsite only to find that no campsite was there. It must have closed at some stage but let us with no option but to get a motel room for the night.

That's for sure

The temperature today was again very high and it’s very draining to cycle in it all day. The forecast is for much of the same with the possibility of thunder storms over the next few days. It’s hotter still in Virginia so we have resigned ourselves to the fact that the rest of this ride is likely to be exhausting and uncomfortable in the humidity. Tonight though we are relaxed and cool with the air con turned up high.

Daily Mileage -68.33 miles

Time in Saddle -6 hrs 34 mins

Total Climbing – 1,187 ft