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We left our motel room and had a hearty breakfast at the Garden Cafe in Eureka Kansas, where our waitress looked very much like my sister Kate. And, since I was constantly staring at her, I had to tell our waitress this, so that she didn’t think I was a weirdo. But, I’m pretty sure that she thought I was a weirdo anyway – I was wearing bike shorts at the time.

Our day was fairly uneventful, we had some busy roads and rough shoulders, but nothing extraordinary. I did see my first armadillo, but it was a little bit squished (roadkill). We also diverted from the official “trans America” trail. We decided back in Utah that we would rather cross Missouri using the Katy trail (a rails to trails bike path that traverses most of the state) than go through the Ozarks. The benefit to this is threefold, the Ozarks are notoriously steep and winding, with poor visibillity, small shoulders and heavy traffic. The Katy trail, on the other hand, looks very pretty, has no traffic, and is kept fairly flat, since it used to be a railroad line. Now that we are off route we are using a Kansas state map, but it doesn’t have any of the useful extra information that our other maps have, like service stops etc. So, we have to freewheel it a bit.

After 99 miles, we made it to Mound City. We were looking for a place to camp and scoped out the town park (no water), the Methodist church (no one home) and we were looking for the police station when a woman in a postal service car asked us if we needed help. We explained our search for a camp site and then she offered to let us camp in her yard. People in Kansas are the nicest. Chilesa and her husband Van live in a huge log house at the top of a hill, with a beautiful view, and, they have horses. The horses were very curious and they came over to check us out while we set up our tent. After we set up our tent, Chilesa offered to drive us into town to get dinner (even though it was only maybe 1/4 of a mile and we could have walked.) and she even came back to pick us up. After dinner we showered and spent the evening chatting with Chilesa an Van. One if the nicest parts of this trip so far has been the wonderful people that we have met. After the generosity and kindness of our hosts tonight, I am filled with all sorts of warm feelings. Thanks to Van and Chilesa.