Golden City, MO to Walnut, MO – 62 miles
Woke up this morning in my hammock under the shelter at the Golden City city park. I slept great after Julia pointed out a great way to lay in a hammock that I’ve been missing out on for years. If you lay diagonally it folds and you can lay much flatter than just laying in it straight. Typically my back would be soar after sleeping in my hammock, not this morning though. It was perfect temperature and no bugs.
We went back to Cooky’s Diner, the place where Dries and I ate dinner last night, for breakfast. I got a ham and cheese omelette with tomatoes and onions and a side of hash browns. Great way to start the morning. We were on the bikes probably by around 9 am. I felt energized and the first 25 miles or so to the state line flew by. It felt great to cross another state off the list. Four down, five to go. I’ve heard the people in Kansas are the friendliest on the route and they are already living up to their reputation. While we were taking break by the state line a lady stopped in her car (I think her name was Joanne) and offered to take our photo! It’s nice to get a photo of the group because we usually don’t have another person around to take a shot of all of us together.
After the state line, Pittsburg, KS was only about another 13 miles away. My brother in law, Joe, grew up and went to college there. His parents still live nearby in Fort Scott and my sister had told me to give them a shout as we went through town. Jon and Marianne, Joe’s parents, met us and treated us to lunch at a local Mexican spot. It was delicious and fueled us for the rest of the ride to our destination for the night. We decided to stay at a church just before Walnut, KS that let’s cyclist sleep in their banquet room.
After Pittsburg the terrain really started to flatten out.
We arrived at the church around 4 PM. It was nice to have some time to be able to hang out and just take it easy. I did some yoga to stretch the soar muscles out a bit. We met the pastor. His name is Jay and looks like he can’t be any older than mid-thirties. Really nice guy, told us to eat whatever we wanted and make ourselves at home.
They had a meeting and afterwords a woman who was at the meeting, Alicia, offered to take some of our laundry back to their house and do a load for us! Now we’re hanging out listening to Dries serenade us while some Mac and Cheese cooks in the kitchen. Yummmmm!
