Day 13: Dodge City to Great Bend, Kansas 86 miles. Flat as a Pancake

Today was a beautiful day.  Nice ride.  A very mild headwind.  Mostly smooth roads.  All in all, a good day.

I'm not sure what it was this morning, but I was somnambulant.  I forgot to sign out at gear loading this morning.  And I couldn't find the right groove leaving Dodge.  It was just one of those days where I tried to figure out if I was really up for riding this day.  For the first 25 miles or so, I just couldn't find the right rhythm.  

I kid you not.  Today we passed more tractor dealerships than car dealerships.  Yes, Virginia, this is farm country!

Then things changed and the rest of the day went like clockwork.  I think it was when I stopped to take a picture of a mural on the side of a taco shop in the tiny "town," if you could call it that, of Offerle.  Once I got back in the bike, everything changed for the better.

The past few days, we've ridden by a number of these murals.  This one actually was very well done.  They all recount the history of the area; some far better than others.

From a sightseeing point of view, there wasn't much to take in today.  Soon after we "got the heck outta Dodge," we were riding through a huge wind farm.  I missed the sign that listed all the stats, but was told at dinner tonight about how long each of those blades you saw in my photo yesterday was and how tall those towers were and what speeds they turn, etc.  I didn't stop to take a picture as you've already seen them from previous days' photos.  But it felt a bit surrealistic, as if I was in the middle of an animated scene from the Pink Floyd movie, "The Wall" with tiny me running through the middle of those giants (and no, it wasn't an acid flashback!).

Welcome to Kinsley, Kansas, the midway point between the oceans.  But not the midway point for this cross country cycling challenge.  There's an additional 500+ miles to get to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles.  With kudos to The Who, we finally left US 50 and turned onto US 56.  Much narrower shoulders, but the road was smooth as silk.  So we take our choice:  narrower shoulders where we're closer to the trucks or wider, choppier shoulders that rattle our teeth, but are farther away from the traffic.  Most everyone today preferred the former.  Also, as you can see, this road was straight as an arrow for about 20 miles.  

From there, it was riding through a string of very small towns:  Wright, Spearville ("Home of the Wind Farm"), the aforementioned Offerle, Kinsley ("Midway USA"), Garfield, Larned, Dundee and, finally, Great Bend.  Adding to the litany of mass producers of foods and foodstuffs I've passed was the ADM plant outside of Dodge City.  I'm sure they were processing all the corn for high fructose corn syrup.

About two-thirds of the way into today's ride, US 56 ran through this small town of Larned.  It was quaint and depressing all in the same breath.  Many storefronts sat empty.  Nearly everything was old or in need of repair.  No new stores.  No real restaurants to speak of.  Mostly everything to accommodate the needs of the local farmers.  This downtown actually ran for three or four blocks as opposed to Cimarron, which we passed through yesterday and stopped at Clark's Drugs.  That was just big enough to afford an intersection.

I forgot to mention this in previous posts:  There is a smell about Kansas that would disavow any desire to drive a convertible through this state.  For the most part, I would assume it's the feed lots and farms that give off their noxious stenches.  But there are other foul smells that always catch us as we're riding through the countryside.  After a while, we kind of get used to them, but they remain an offensive experience.  

And yet, there were two occasions, that we later talked about and agreed upon over dinner, when we found ourselves smelling something quite out of the ordinary and unexplainable.  The first was when we all came over a rise just before entering the town of Hasty.  We all sensed something that smelled like pipe tobacco.  The second was just before coming into Dodge City.  There, the smell reminded many of us of freshly baked bread.  Not one of us could find a logical explanation for either experience, but we all agreed that those were far better than the typical smells of manure.

Tomorrow, an easy ride East into McPherson, Kansas.  Then we start turning to the Northeast and head towards Abilene, Topeka and St. Joe's.