Kansas part two

I'm doing another post via my phone, so be patient with any glaring mistakes. 

Since my bike broke, I've had to follow a different route through Kansas. Instead of going to through the southeastern part as adventure cycling would have me go, I'm going up to Kansas City, so I can visit the REI there and hopefully get my bike replaced. From Larned, the most direct route is to go along US highway 56. For the first day and a quarter out of Larned, I did just that. For the first 25 miles of the second day, I kept seeing all these crosses on the side of the road. It's likely that most of them are not from cyclists, but I had this feeling that if I kept riding on 56, I was gonna be one of those crosses. I resolved to get off the federal highway and take county roads. 

Once off the main highway, I found that things became quieter, and the scenery became more interesting. Rolling pastures and golden wheat fields extended to the horizon on both sides, and layers of hills were shrouded in purplish haze as they became more distant. The road itself scrunched up accordion style; I found myself going up and down many steep, short hills. I stopped in a little town called Tampa, where a woman opened her shop after hours for me, and later made me a sandwich. She even offered to let me use her pool! I declined the dip in the pool, citing my need to get to Herington before sundown. Such generosity and hospitality continues to blow me away. 

Today, after riding some unpaved county roads to council grove, I got on the flint hills nature trail, and rode it for almost 70 miles! Man, what a treat! No cars, no steep hills, and it wasn't even super hot! The trail is unpaved, and the surfaces ranges from gorgeous limestone pea gravel to dirt/mud to the gravel you see along railroads (the latter is almost impossible to ride with my bike, so I was lucky that I only encountered it for a few hundred yards). Sometimes the trail would get pretty covered in vegetation. Overall, for a trail that's technically still under construction, it was really nice. The grasshoppers got a little obnoxious sometimes. As you pass by, they throw themselves at you, and seem to cling to your leg hairs for a split second before disembarking. This is an unpleasant sensation, especially when tens, or even hundreds are doing it in the space of a few hundred yards! Even though I went a little slower than usual today, I had such a good time getting tired and dirty. Unpaved trails like that are too much fun. In Missouri, in hoping to ride a similar trail, the Katy trail, for most of the way across the state. 

Tomorrow I go to Kansas city to resolve my bike issues. Fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly.