Day 27 - McPherson to Abilene - 65 miles

It looked like rain when we went into breakfast and it was raining when we came back out. Still fairly warm so the question is do you use a rain jacket or not? It stopped raining before we left so I just put the jacket in my little carrier and we took off. The rain kept things a bit cooler so other than a little splash back, it was a pleasant start to the ride.

After cycling east out of town for a while, we actually turned north which hasn't been a common direction for us. Things started looking greener, less flat, and there were more trees. We were out on nice back country roads, away from the busier routes we've been on for a few days and it was quite a pleasant change.

We also found some buffalo in Canton!

We passed through Maxwell Wildlife Refuge without seeing any wildlife at all. That was a little disappointing. Then we saw the vans up ahead and I thought maybe someone had a flat. But there were a lot of people kind of milling around and standing out in the road and we started wondering if there had been an accident. We were a bit concerned until we remembered it was the halfway point of the ride! People were just taking photos. :)

Al and Gnorman celebrating.

Konny, Kettie, Dick, Fiona, (Cincinnati) Barry with Shane on top of the van

About six miles after the halfway point we had our first sag stop in Gypsum at the town park. A reporter showed up to do an interview for the local paper and they opened up the town center so we could use the restrooms. We might have been the highlight of their day. Or week. Or month??

Main street in Gypsum, KS

We worked our way north and east throughout the day. The wind was mostly from the north so I enjoyed heading east more than north. It wasn't horrible - I've cycled through worse! - but I could have tolerated less. We'd had clouds most of the day but then the sun popped out on us and it started heating up. 

Fiona and I hadn't put on any sunscreen (yes, I know you can get sunburned on a cloudy day) so we pulled over to put some on and Ann cycled ahead.

We came into the small town of Solomon and it looked like a nice place to live. Only about 10 miles from Abilene, nice houses, good park, and a lovely little convenience store that sold diet Pepsi and popsicles. :) We stopped to cool off a bit and Texas Barry joined up with us for the ride into Abilene. We passed the Greyhound Hall of Fame on the way in. 

Yes, Fiona has some sort of thing about riding statues.

When we got into Abilene, we were so excited about taking the picture of the water tower that we went past our turn and had to do some creative navigating to get back on course. Saw this cool mansion in the meanwhile.

Famous and owned by some banker or other and now for sale.

And I had to take this one for family! (Nancy married an Etherington)

Abilene is home to the Eisenhower Library. We stopped in but then decided to go for food before getting serious about it. I didn't feel hungry but I'm pretty sure my blood sugar was low. Not thinking clearly, difficulty making decisions, generally irritable... (I know, that never happens does it?) And it was past two without lunch and cycling 65 miles so it's just possible that food was needed. So we asked the museum guy for a recommendation and rode our bikes to Joe Snuffy's where I enjoyed a grilled ham and cheese with a side salad. Then we rode back, visited the chapel where Ike is buried, saw some displays at the library, walked the grounds. It would have been possible to spend quite a while there but we were ready for showers and non-cycling clothes.