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New Day Cafe: The Bike Ride Continues Across Kansas [1]

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Date: 2025-07-03

This is the fifth installment in my series about the cross-country bicycle trip that my brother and I took in 1971. The previous chapter can be found at this link, and each diary has a link to the previous one. We pick up the journey near Junction City, Kansas.

June 12, 1971

Today’s story was one of shifting fortunes from the weather gods. As we broke camp, a storm began to build from the south. We received a couple showers from it, but escaped the heavy rain. One short stretch of road was unpaved with patches of loose sand. We struggled to keep our bikes upright. Soon enough we found ourselves on Kansas Highway 18. This road turned out to be one of my best route choices of the entire trip. It runs roughly parallel to Interstate 70 and carries mainly local traffic. Easy riding for us, as long as the weather didn’t interfere.

Highway 18 west of Bennington. Pics are from 2017 unless otherwise noted.

This morning as we rode due west, the wind was coming from the southwest, almost in our faces. Thirty-five miles into the day’s ride, we took a break at a small store. In the short time we were off the bikes, the wind died down. Next stop was in Bennington where we had lunch. In my journal, I described the food as “satisfactory,” hardly a ringing endorsement of the cuisine!

For one brief spell, the wind was at our backs, allowing us to cover 12 miles in 45 minutes (our usual pace was 10 miles per hour).

We zipped through Tescott with the wind at our backs.

The town of Beverly was an hour’s ride from our destination, so we bought fresh corn and pork chops to fix for dinner. Better than satisfactory, that’s for sure. Beverly is where I had my first legal drink. In Missouri you had to be 21 to buy alcohol; in Kansas the legal age was 18 or 19. I looked very young for my age, but the bartender concluded that my driver’s licence was real, and he served me a beer. Patrick wanted a sip, but too many people were watching. He had to settle for his Coke.

The old tavern in Beverly has seen better days. 2006 photo.

Camping was legal in rest areas throughout Kansas. We stopped at the roadside park outside of Lincoln and set up camp. The park joined a creek, and the mosquitoes welcomed us.

From my journal,

“Shortly after we set up camp, three local boys drove in and stopped. They were fixing to go fishing and said they’d bring us some fish if they caught any. They were half-drunk though, so we didn’t expect much. They told us about the wild marijuana they had found growing along the creek.”

Good thing we had those pork chops to fix for dinner, because the boys didn’t catch anything.

The rest area near Lincoln. It has changed a lot since 1971.

June 13, 1971

Reading my notes 54 years after the fact, I’m struck by how devout Patrick and I were then. From my journal:

“Went to 10:00 mass in Lincoln (missed 7:30 because clock stopped), washed clothes, tried again to call home – no answer. Ate lunch at Post House Cafe, named for the sandstone fenceposts that are sometimes used here in place of wood.”

Downtown Lincoln, 2019 photo.

We felt so obligated to go to church that we did not start our cycling day until after lunch! Twenty-five miles down the road, we stopped for milk shakes in the town of Lucas. In the days before sports drinks, we went through plenty of soft drinks and milk shakes.

The high school in Lucas,

We found a rest area in Luray with picnic tables and plenty of shade, and took an extended break there.

After 55 miles of riding, we were in Natoma. The map showed a rest area at the west edge of town, but it turned out to be little more than a pair of picnic tables sitting beneath a canopy, right next to the main road. This was supposed to be our destination for the evening, and it was not inviting at all. To make matters worse, the wind had picked up and rain was on the way.

Old buildings in Natoma.

On the way through town, we’d had an encounter with three young locals in a pickup truck. One of them teased me by holding a can of beer just out of my reach, and then they sped away. Despite my initial concerns, they turned out to be good folks after all. When the three of them, plus one of their friends on a bike, saw us sitting on the picnic tables in the wind, they offered us a place to stay. It was a furnished rental house belonging to the grandparents of the dude on the bike, and it happened to be vacant with the utilities on. We eagerly accepted that offer! It got better. Curt and Elaine, the married couple of the group, invited us to their house for a home cooked meal of venison and other goodies.

Once again, we could have been sitting next to the road waiting out a storm, but instead were enjoying the hospitality of strangers.

June 14, 1971

Patrick and I were barely awake when there was a knock at the door. Everett, one of the local guys, brought bacon and eggs for breakfast. After all this hospitality we were almost tempted to stay in Natoma, but we were on a mission. The west coast beckoned.

Natoma was a scheduled mail stop. We collected our mail and rode into the Kansas countryside. The day was pleasant, only reaching about 80 for an afternoon high, and the wind was not a factor.

The rest area in Plainview.

Fifteen miles down the highway, we took a break at the rest area in Plainville. The next town was Palco, located a short distance off the highway. We found the town diner and sat down in one of the booths. We had not even ordered our food when two deputy sheriffs ambled through the door and took the booth next to ours.

Now, most of the people who struck up conversations with us were genuinely interested in our trip, and our wellbeing. The deputies were not so friendly. First of all, they were convinced that we were runaways. I produced a “to whom it may concern” letter my parents had written, giving us permission to make the trip. I also pointed out that if we were runaways, we had chosen a rather inefficient means of escape.

Rather than saying something like, “Cool, how’s the trip going?” they started giving us grief about our hair. “Doesn’t the wind resistance from that hair slow you guys down?” Now, if I had been a better student in physics class, I might have responded with theorems and formulas. Instead I said, “Maybe so, but the extra weight helps us going downhill.”

A very nostalgic gas station in Palco,

We managed to leave the diner without getting handcuffed. Wouldn’t you know, Patrick left his sunglasses on the table and had to go back to retrieve them.

The remainder of the day’s ride was uneventful. Just past Bogue, we bid farewell to State Highway 18, which had turned out to be a great route for cycling. Now we turned west on US 24, stopping long enough in Hill City to buy food for dinner and breakfast. West of town, the asphalt took on a greenish color. As we traveled, we noticed that the roads were different colors, depending on the native matertials used.

Stone church in Damar.

Thanks to our campground guide, we knew of a place called Sheridan County Lake where camping was free. The lake was just far enough from the highway that we didn’t notice the traffic noise. Only a few other people were around, and we had a pleasant end to our day. We were now 780 miles into our trip.

I nearly forgot the map. Click to enlarge.

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