Day 52: Goodbye to Kansas (Wed 16th July)

This is it down to business. Awake at 4am, on the road by 5.10. Its still dark, the sun won't be up for the best part of an hour. Fireflies light up here and there as I pass by as if in reponse to my own torch. There is no traffic on the road. As the light increases and dawn breaks it feels magical. I watch a great sunrise. With less weight its much easier on the road. I pass signposts for Stuttgart and then Dresden. It can be easy to get a bit disoriented on the roads out here. After 30 miles I arrive in Norton for a break. I'm making good time. 20 mins later I'm back on the road. There's definitely new resolve in the legs today.

The landscape has changed today. It doesn't feel as vast. It has closed in a bit and sometimes you feel as if you're high up until you crest the next ridge. I see a few animals I haven't encountered before. Not long after dawn a prarie dog saunters across the road in front of me. In places swarms of large grasshoppers sit on the road. A small deer thinks about crossing the road, sees me and then bounds back into some bushes. I see two trucks approaching and then one of them decides to pass out the other, swerves into my side of the road and absolutely blasts past closeby. You can think up your own worst insult for someone and you can be assured I was thinking something similar.

By 10.50 I was in Oberlin for a food stop. This is where I leave route 36 and turn North onto route 83 for the last 27 miles to McCook in Nebraska. I've been following route 36 since Indianapolis so Oberlin serves as a marker for another phase of the journey. After some food I take a quick look into Oberlin which brands itself as the site of the last Indian raid in Kansas in 1878. Curious to find out more I went to the local museum but it was closed. The town itself was another 'cowboy town' type with one long street of the Kansas shopfronts. The street was cobbled which was an unusual sight out here.

I didn't hang about to long as the temperatures were set to rise into the mid-nineties and I wanted to get to McCook before the real heat kicked in. I headed north with a 20mph southerly tailwind behind me. This was great. The temperature was hot but who cares. The sun was on my back and I was flying. Two hours later I was at McCook. With over 90 miles and a new state entered this new regime was starting well. Hopefully it continues. Tomorrow brings a long haul to Holyoke in Colorado.