Go Big And Go Home - Day 17 - Entertaining Migration……

Well today marked another huge change of scenery from yesterday and the day before.

We hit the road early as it was expected to be a very hot day in Kansas.  Colorado had a very nice cool evening and morning so it made for a fresh and very comfortable start to the day.  Sunshine, blue skies, calm winds.  I had been a little stiff yesterday riding and had some discomfort in my shoulders and back, but the stretching I did the night before and this morning before we left did wonders.

As we headed out we bid adieu to the Rocky Mountains in our mirrors…..we had ridden quite a ways from the Rockies yesterday but we could still see them, or at least until we started out on Hwy 10….as they started to fade into the distance I took the opportunity for one last photo.  It was also a good opportunity to get a photo of all the windmills.  Wasn’t hard to pick them out as this area of Colorado, heading into Kansas, is nothing but miles and miles of Prairie range and poker straight roads.

So one might ask….what do you do to entertain yourself on a road that is, for all intent and purposes, straight as a school ruler for 100s of kms.

Well….first you pick out what looks like a “town” in the horizon, mark your odometer and then watch it as you hurl yourself towards said “town”  at 110 kms/hr.  Now I use the term “said towns” because often times there is not even a town, just a grain elevator posing as such….today we hit 12 kms from where we had seen it in the horizon until we were in front of it. 

The other way to entertain yourself, is to celebrate certain odometer “milestones”, like Mr. J!…..today old Blue hit 150,000 kms somewhere out in the Colorado prairie before getting to Kansas.

Sometimes, Mother Nature can provide you with entertainment or challenge your senses….like today for example.  As we rode along Hwy 10, I was the first to notice a huge tarantula on the road…at first I wasn’t sure if it was the hairy spider or a scorpion maybe……the second sighting confirmed it was a hairy tarantula….and if I wasn’t certain then, the next 50 or so we saw crossing the road, left no doubt in our minds….so apparently, according to locals who were not surprised at our sightings at all, this is the time of year that they migrate…finding one article about this informed us it is actually a mate-gration, which means the male tarantula will travel to find a den of the female to mate with.  Many cross the roads to get to the other “playing field” which is quite remarkable when you think of it.  Especially since once they mate, they die….or in this case die trying.  We did our best to avoid them, for many reasons but mostly because we didn’t want to kill them.  Thought I had seen all kinds of wildlife crossing the road in my day, including turtles earlier this summer, but this one caught me right in the web (tarantulas don’t spin webs just for the record).  So just like us, the male tarantula is both migrating and entertaining albeit in a much different fashion.

About an hour outside of our intended stop for the night in Scott City, KS, we crossed the state line into Kansas.  The picture to the left is the sign welcoming us to Kansas (hard to read in this pic but that is what it says), with a little bit of Kansas scenery to share as well…..The next 15 minutes brought us to lunch for a quick snack then back on the road again.  For the next 45 minutes it was prairie wind coming from the SW at a sustained speed of 55 km/hr with additional wind gusts.  The wind was essentially coming right at us on our right side, which meant for the next 45 minutes we rode like we were rounding a right corner, leaned over and steady on the right handle bar….not an easy ride for that length of time.  The bonus was getting into the hotel early, and since we lost an hour crossing the state line, arriving at 3 p.m. KS time was really like arriving at 2 p.m. CO time…either way it was just in time…the temps had increased to 35 C and the winds made us feel like we were in a convection oven.

A shower, some rest, more planning, and a few other things taken care of we headed to Pizza Hut (because we thought they would have wine and knew Wendy’s would not) for supper.  Lucky us we at least got a good walk in as Pizza Hut was further away, but no wine there either…three beers to chose from…Bud, Bud Light and Michelob…..we shared a Bud!

Tomorrow we are heading north to Concordia KS.  This should put us on track to head in a more easterly direction through Nebraska (a new state to cross) and then to Missouri and beyond.

Flat

Flat

Flatter