Day 43: Wednesday, May 17

First of all, I need to send a shout out to Mikael... Happy Birthday! It is very obvious that we are now in the plains as the roads here are all flat and mostly straight. A grain silo will appear on the horizon of the next town, but it is sometimes more than 20 miles away. And we can see that same silo for the next hour or more as we ride towards that town. It's just something different that we haven't experienced before.

We met a lady when we stopped to eat a snack in Arlington this morning. She was very helpful and gave us a map put together by city and county officials in eastern Colorado that listed the services available in the towns ahead. There has been a severe drought in this area of the country, and several of the cities are almost modern ghost towns. We crossed into Kansas in the late afternoon. Unfortunately, there wasn't a big "Welcome to Kansas" sign there to greet us. Tonight we are camped at the city park in Tribune. Today we set a new distance record of 114 miles.