Day 12: Garden City to Dodge City, Kansas 53 miles. Flat as a Pancake.

Me and the Boys want to welcome y'all to Dodge City

It was a funny kind of day today.  Not a long ride.  Lots of stopping to take pictures.  A light drizzle halfway through the ride.

It was a funny day from the very start.  Because it was so short a day, we were allowed to sleep in.  Breakfast was whenever we wanted to eat, but load wasn't scheduled until 8 a.m. with the ride starting right afterwards.  That threw many of us off our usual routine.  I kind of get programmed after a while and even a rest day doesn't affect me because I'll go right back to the same routine.  Wake up at 4:30 or 5:30.  Breakfast at 5:30 or 6:00.  Load at 6:00 or 6:30 and off onto the road.  Not today.

It was also different today because this was Peter's last morning with us.  Peter, our resident aeronautical engineer, pilot and professor, was heading back to Massachusetts to his teaching job.  Having ridden with Peter last year, this goodbye was a sad reminder of how he had to leave to take care of his ailing father.  Peter's a good egg.  Encyclopedic mind and happy to share his knowledge with you.  Dinner with Peter usually became either a history or aeronautics or meteorologic lesson.  And no one complained.  Safe riding Peter.

Wind turbine blades at their manufacturing site, just waiting to be installed.

And, a bit farther down the road, those blades being put to good use.

Once we got out of Garden City, it was a basic straight shot down Route 50 in a southeasterly direction to Dodge City.  As we passed the Tyson Chicken plant yesterday, it was only fair to pass the Conagra Beef Processing facility today.

Your future burgers hard at work.

The highlight of the morning was our collective stopping in Cimarron at Clark's Pharmacy, an old-fashioned drug store/ice cream parlor with soda fountain service.  Even though it was only 10 a.m., we all stopped for either sundaes or smoothies.  They were soooo good!  Great folks running the place.  Apparently, this stop has become an America By Bike tradition, so they were expecting us.

America's highway system in the mid-1800's.

More sightseeing along the way with the Sante Fe trail.  Two things I learned:  The Arkansas River was, at one time, the border between the United States and Mexico (I didn't know the Kansas territory was our southern border there); the Santa Fe trail was basically the US's east-west highway for covered wagon trains before the railroads were built.

If the showbiz actor who comes out and talks to you in an "authentic" western drawl isn't cheesy enough, the height of the tackiness of this place is what's anchoring the line of "historic" western stores at the other end from the museum…an Applebee's!  Truly disappointing.  But maybe not as disappointing as riding past Doc Holliday Liquors!

Arriving into Dodge City and riding down Wyatt Earp Boulevard, I was all excited by all the billboards announcing Boot Hill and the Museums and the historic downtown, etc.  What a disappointment when I got there.  The "historic downtown" is just a strip of stores made up to look like what they would have 150 years ago.  Disney does better.  The Boot Hill Museum is nothing more than a tourist stop.  And Boot Hill is now on the corner of Front Street and 5th Avenue.  Fortunately, I found a really nice local place, Cup of Jo-nes, for lunch.  Friendly staff, good food and excellent smoothies.

Tomorrow, we're back on our regular schedule and heading to Great Bend.