Day 16

Now if you’ve seen our route you’ll know that we have two drive by days. Today is one of them. No need for an early start so a leisurely up, shower, pack up, and then down into Pueblo to collect the bikes. Jack’s, Felipe’s, Raymond’s and mine had all been in for repair, now they were good to go. Bikes on board and headed out of Pueblo to Alexander, Kansas. We drove and the scenery became very flat and non-descript, just flat. The Rockies were now becoming small specks on the horizon, and just flat, and we were still in Colorado. You don’t really think of Colorado as flat but sure enough it is on this side of the Rockies. I have to say that this particular road was not great with a very small bike path on the side and more vehicles than we had seen for some time. So maybe that’s why it’s a drive by route.

Kansas and here we are. The scenery stays the same and we are unimpressed, just flat as far as the eye can see, and hot too. We pass through small towns and I mean small, maybe 6 or 7 houses, with some other houses boarded up and dilapidated. Seems like small town America is suffering.
We finally come to Alexander our stop – wow even smaller than the other towns we’ve passed through. Now for a camp site and we are told that the nearest one is 30 miles away North of Alexander. OK so that’s it! Onto the dusty back roads and off we go to the Kansas State Park camp site, 30 miles! We get there late and have to use the van headlights to see to put the tent up and to cook! Not good, but what else could we do? We get everything done and finally it’s sleep time. We have a long ride tomorrow, Alexander to Nickerson, some 96 miles. But we know that we are in flat lands.

Let me tell you about the van – Jack bid for it on a government site. The van was being sold by Kentucky Tech and Jack finally got the last bid in to get the van for just over 5k. A good buy, it’s a 15 seater and in good nick. A 2001 Dodge 3500 Maxi with under 100k mileage. Jack goes and collects the van and then drives it to San Fran where he meet us there on the 4th June. He actually does a road trip with his dad for part of this, which is pretty cool. Vegas and the Grand Canyon are some of the places he visits – not sure just how many miles Jack puts on the van though!! She’s still going, but I think we need to get an oil change soon.

BP