A week or so ago, John from the UK introduced me to the Epic Ride Weather app, which pulls down GPS route files from Ride with GPS and generates charts showing various aspects of the weather along the route, including wind speed and direction. For today’s leg of our adventure we headed northeast and the wind direction was predicted to be directly from the south (at 14-19 mph with gusts as high as 28 mph), offering a slightly quartering tailwind. I didn’t feel that it helped much but it didn’t impede much either.
Locals imply that winds are a constant out here. We’ve found windmills, generally in bunches, especially here in central/eastern Kansas.I actually only saw this out of the corner of my eye–too much time spent head down into the winds, watching the road for debries, waiting to compensate for the next wind gust. But someone mentioned it later and I sparked a memory. Luckily Jason (another Seven frame rider) posted this photo the next day in our What’s App group. My memory is from Day 21 of the ABB North 2019 trip, where I encountered a longer train that appeared to be parked on a spur, awaiting restarting of the 737 Max production line. The 2019 post is at https://flexpad.net/2019/07/16/day-21-lusk-wyoming-to-hot-springs-south-dakota/.Having started in Los Angeles, this is not our halfway point, but we stopped anyway.This old steam locomotive was at the above park, along with a collection of old farm implementsOn the northern edge of the town of Pawnee Rock, the Pawnee Rock State Historic Site. This view is of the town from the top of the observation structureLooking to the west from the observation structureThis is the Arkansas river just to the southwest of Great Bend and its hike-bike trail. You might think this is close to the headwaters of the river but it begins just to the south of Denver, Colorado, quite a distance to the west and discharge to the Mississippi river near Napoleon, Arkansas.