Today I left from our hotel before Cami got up. I wanted to catch the light tailwind that was out there and really make some miles. I did catch a tailwind for about 45 miles, which was a great help. Surprisingly, even though the winds are supposed to move west to east in general across the U.S. I have not found this to be very true. One business person I spoke with told me that the winds are very strange this year with a lot of varied direction to them. That was back in Utah.
Cami was able to get some work done in the hotel before leaving, got a few groceries and fueled up before leaving. We came through lots of small towns today.
Most looked like this...a main street with mostly closed storefronts. It seems very hard to keep even a restaurant open in these towns. This one did have a gas station and a cute pharmacy with many gift-y items. Cami was hunting for a high plains postcard. The 3 women in the pharmacy encouraged her that the town about 20 miles south probably had them. That's definitely a difference between city and country living. We are not used to driving long distances for daily items. Cami just kept going on our route...never finding that postcard, so we rely on the photos to represent that stretch of eastern Colorado.
Bits and Spurs didn't look very open...and in fact was for sale...but some bikers were getting breakfast there. Now that we were east of Pueblo we began to see more cross country bikers. This particular day we say 4-5 groups or individuals. Most were going west with Bike the US for MS but we did encounter a few going our way as the days went on.
The topography has changed for sure...instead of multi-colored rock walls there are multi-colored grains and vegetation.
Checking in...need water? need a cold coke out of the camper?
A consideration for our overnight. Sheridan Lake - consisting of a convenience store, a dried up lake...BUT a church that left its door open and air conditioning on with a sign that asked bikers to sign in and feel free to sleep in the fellowship hall and use the kitchen. We learned about this from our bike maps, and it was confirmed on this town sign below.
Cami walked down to check this out. The white was supposed to be water, but it was dry, dry, dry. Could this be why? or was this posted while there was still water?
If we camped here this could have been where we stayed! We did figure that this used to be a real campground since there were posts with electric outlets and water spigots, but sadly non-functional.
We decided to go on 10 more miles to Towner.
Off the main road was this little historic site. Note the gate made out of silver painted tools welded together.
There was even less in Towner. Nothing but a grain elevator and some houses. We parked on a gravel road and boondocked for the night. We did take a little walk and watched the trucks busy delivering - the harvest was right and rain was expected the next day or two so even though it was nearing the 4th folks were working hard. We slept well in this sleepy little town.