1,715 miles down - 1,700 miles to go. Goodbye Kansas, it's been real.....

Day 25
Abilene KS to Topeka KS.
105 Miles , 6,800 ft climbing, side winds.

                                                                  Halfway There!!

One thing is for certain, Northeast Kansas is much prettier than Southwest Kansas. Today's ride was 105 miles of rolling farmlands with a good dose of climbing. We were able to see plenty of green and a fair amount of trees, much better than the whole bunch of nothin' that we had in the first couple days of Kansas. I woke up this morning with "heavy legs", for the first time I had the feeling that riding was not going to be any fun today. I was a little sore and very tired but the only way to Boston is to pedal so...pedal I did.

Water towers and windmills tend to be all over Kansas, this water tower wins the award for the tallest and skinniest, it was also at the 15 mile mark which is usually my time for my first "quick stop" of the morning...I love my pre-ride coffee.

At about mile 50 we came across "Peggy 2", A large snapping turtle that decided the middle of the road would be a nice place to get some sun.

I wanted to pick the turtle up and move it off the road but it wasn't keen on me touching it and those claws were huge so we decided that since the road had very few cars and this turtle was 20 pounds of pure mean that it would be best if I just left it alone.

Next time you are in Dover, be sure to stop in the cafe on the corner (there is only 1 corner, can't miss it) and be sure to have a piece of pie. Above you can see a picture of Norma on the wall as she won the Good Morning America "best pie in America contest". Norma won last year at age 89 but she passed away a couple months ago.

This is Connie, she worked with Norma for years and has all of Normas' recipes and she make some fantastic pies. Stop on in next time you are in Dover KS.

We were watching the skies all day. They were dark and the humidity was high and we were that a thunder shower was going to get us at any second but after 8 1/2 hours on the bike we didn't see our first lightening until we were in the hotel parking lot in Topeka, good timing. The skies then opened up and it poured rain, fingers crossed for a dry day tomorrow,

I'm tired and I'm crawling into bed.

Dream Big, Jeff