QUICK STATS

Woke up in the flower garden.  So nice. :-)  Packed up and headed to Subway for more footlong subs.  I ordered each of us a "Mega Subway Sunrise Melt" on flatbread.  We'd never had flatbread before, and we were curious to see what it was like.  I happen to L-O-V-E Subway's breakfast sandwiches, so I was totally excited to have Subway again for breakfast.  While I ordered our sandwiches, Nathan went across the street to get us each a pumpkin spice cappuccino.  That's right, Larned has Nathan's favorite coffee, so we are definitely going to have some more.  We each ate our sub and downed our coffee without any problem.  I can't believe we've each eaten so much in the past 12-ish hours!  

A lady walked into Subway and asked about our trip.  I told her about the wind, and she GROWLED.  Haha!  I like her!  She watched us eat, put our sunscreen on, stretch, and everything else we did all the way until we pulled out of the parking lot.  So cute.

Back on the road, it was more of the same...crosswinds and big trucks.  I created a metaphor for what it's been like riding in the mornings lately: It's like Nathan and I are walking down the hallway at school between classes, and the big trucks are all the bullies.  They come up to you, push  you really hard into a locker or something, smack all the books out of your hands, and then speed off to class laughing.  Arg.

Besides lots of bullies, nothing really happened on our ride today.  We did take a picture of the Kansas state route signs though.  Nathan thinks they look like a sunshine.  I think they look like a sawblade (look closely at the tips of the "sun" and you'll see spiky things).

We also stopped at two random houses to go to the bathroom today.  The first house had a dog named Tex, so that was cool.  The second house told us about "The Cookie Lady".  Apparently, she lives in Virginia, and she feeds and houses bikers.  Wow!  I hope we find her!

We passed through the Quivira National Wildlife Preserve.  We didn't see much wildlife in it, just a few deer and some big caterpillars. 

Oh, and we passed through a town and saw a combine parked in front of someone's house! Haha!

One amazing thing is that we didn't stop for our first snack break until after we passed through the Quivira Wildlife Preserve, some 35 miles into our day!  Our Subway breakfast lasted us a super-long time!  As we sat down for lunch, Nathan took a video to talk about our day and show you a fire that's been making TONS of smoke all day long.

The crosswind wasn't as bad today as it has been the last few days, but it was still tough and made riding difficult.  We almost made it to our destination, Buhler, when we realized our map was outdated.  It told us to take a road that didn't even exist anymore!  We found the new road, but right in front of it was a big "Road Closed" sign.  Hmm..now what?

A guy in a truck told us to go up about 30 blocks, take a dirt road 2 miles, then head right at the stop sign to get to Buhler.  Hmm..that didn't sound like a great alternative.  So we decided to try the closed road.  Well, sure enough, a bridge was out and the road really was closed.  Poo.  Why couldn't the construction sign be wrong?  So we went back to the road, up 30 blocks, down a dirt road for 2 miles, took a right at the stop sign, and rode into Buhler.

We got to the grocery store about 5 minutes before it closed and bought meatballs, spaghetti sauce, and bananas.  We met a lady outside of the grocery store who asked about our trip and said she couldn't ever do anything like that.  We told her she could totally do it, and she said, "Oh no I couldn't!  I'd die!", and after thinking for a second, she added, "It'd be a fun way to die though!".  Haha!  :-)

We camped in the city park, and when we got there, a baseball game was just ending.  One of the boys jumped on the back of his dad's scooter to go home, and they took off...right into a tree!  It was just a little, baby tree though, and the dad drove off telling everyone, "I was just attacked by a sapling! It almost killed me!".  It was pretty funny, and we were all laughing, even him and his son.

We set up by a pond with a fountain and cooked our mega, meatball dinner.  A little kitty (probably a year old or so) was poking around where we were and begging for food, but we didn't feed it.  This is the 2nd time we've had a whole bag of frozen meatballs for dinner.  The first time, I was so full I only ate about 1/3 of it.  This time, we polished it off without a problem!  We even had bananas afterwards!

Then Nathan worked on the blog a bit, and I read some more of Undaunted Courage, the story of Lewis and Clark.  I am really liking that book a lot.  

Now it's time for bed.  Ahh...one of my favorite times of day.  :-)

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