Day 35, July 1

Larned to Nickerson, KS
61 miles

The several days of tailwinds and clear skies are over.  I spent the entire day pushing into a 10 to 15 mph headwind while continually scanning the dark skies for signs of rain.

Early in the day I contemplated going slightly off route to the north to either Radium or Seward to wait for some of the uglier clouds to pass but ended up forging on.

On the plus side I kept seeing these really bright flowers on the roadside:

Would you like some crude oil on your corn? Almost every farm here has a number of small oil rigs mixed in with the crops. I could always tell when I was coming up on one as they stank quite a bit.

As you can see some trees and flowers are reappearing. This is a nice change from the endless grass of western Kansas.

By the time I reached the Quivira National Wildlife Refuge I was a bit low on water and was in conservation mode.  I ended up getting lucky and running into a group of riders there who were part of a Bike Across the U.S. for MS event and they let me refill all my bottles with ice cold water from the huge cooler in their sag wagon. About a half mile later I also ran across a water stop that a resident had set up.

On and off throughout the day I came across these fields of lavender flowers. They smelled wonderful.

When I reached Nickerson I did some shopping and had a restaurant meal before setting up camp in the city park. There I ran into Paul, who had been camped at the city park in Ordway with me. His wife and daughter had flown out to visit him and were also camping in the park pavilion.

Grain elevators dominate the towns here. As you can see in the picture below,  one towered over the park. It was a bit noisy until around 10 P.M. but fell silent between then and about 6 A.M..