May 31st Eureka, KS to Newton, KS 72 miles

Curtis Stubbs, our generous host for the night

Kansas "scenery:

Riding before the sun!

It was a pretty brutal day of riding. Unfortunately we had major headwinds again, and in addition the only service stop on our days journey was closed- so we had to truck 70+ miles with no cold beverages, and only the delicious (note, bagels with peanut butter are only delicious once a month, not everyday) food in our packs. It was another hot one to top things off, and about 50 miles into the day I was done for. I think the last 20 miles literally took the amount of time as the first 50. I feel sorry for the mother, because when I've had no protein for several hours I'm a real ray of sunshine to be around.

Our plan was to make it into Newton, but about 5 miles east of town another rider, Curtis Stubbs (heading east), stopped and asked if we wanted an air conditioned place to stay. Now, given our last encounter staying with people (recall scantily clad Kentucky creeper) I was a little wary, but too tired to really care. We followed him to his home (with the plan that if anything felt odd we were out of there), but he was a really nice retired high school counselor, who does quite a bit of touring himself so all was ok there. He and his wife live in a "dome" house (hippies in Kansas, who would have thought?) and he rode the Adventure Cycling "Underground Railroad" route last summer. I chugged about a gallon of water and then we rode into town to eat dinner & he actually called a guy he knew was good with bikes (there are NO bike shops on the route at all in Kansas) and we took mom's bike to him to get it fixed (it wasn't shifting properly). So all in all it was a nice evening, but we were plenty exhausted and not really looking forward to another day of Kansas heat and wind.