Kansas Time

Giant turtle - turtles and frogs have been quite common in MO

We went through Houston and Texas County, but a longhorn?

They have odd signs in Kansas

Flat, but still Missouri

Kansas and western Missouri are pretty flat places, and there's been a lot of rain around here recently (approximately 10 inches within the week). As such, our travel has been humid and threatened by flooding. Actually, all the creeks we've passed have looked quite full. The puddles have also looked like whitewater with all the wind. No problems yet, but when we left Everton yesterday, we had to get the owner of the lodge thing to check out the roads we were headed toward. We hung out for a bit, waiting for a storm to clear, but eventually, we got on the road for a 65 mile ride to Pittsburg, Kansas. The morning was chilly, windy, humid, with some rolling hills (down to a creek and then back up to the fields), but it quickly got sunny, humid, and flat. We had a 15-20mph wind kicking most of the day, and while it was a cross wind/tailwind for the first half of the day, the second half was all headwind. 30 miles in, we hit our one town (and water resupply point). Getting in to town, we had 4 miles of the tailwind, and I didn't drop below 20mph that entire stretch (wahoo). Golden City, MO has a locally-famous diner named Cooky's, and they had some wonderful food, wonderful pies, and wonderful people. We ate a ton, hit the road, and for the next 20+ miles we had a pretty annoying headwind. We were both kinda struggling (heat, windburn, sunburn, cramps = sucks), but we finally hit the state line (at around 58 miles) and a gas station (yay V8). 7 miles later, we hit the hotels/restaurants/grocery stores and collapsed.
This morning, we got out early for another 60 mile day (into Chanute, KS). The terrain is as expected (flat), and we made it 40 miles by 11:00. Heat indexes were over 100 today, and once the sun came out, our abilities deteriorated. We did have some lighter wind, and we did manage to keep our speed up a little. Tomorrow is looking even hotter. Yerg.