Sunday, April 26, 2009

Our hotel in Ordway

Actually quite a nice place, except the proprietress was weird (when I asked for some ice, for example, she said "what do you want ice for?").
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Park in Haswell

The grounds keeper apparently had the day off.
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Penny chats with the outhouse caretaker

She lives across the street, but was on her way to town and stopped to tell us about the history of the area. The outhouse itself can be seen in the background.
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Arlington wayside

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Miles of parked trains and an empty highway

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This is typical of the scenery between Ordway and Eads

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Ordway to Eads, CO

63 miles

Despite the distance, it was a really nice ride today. The weather was near perfect - overcast and cool in the morning, then into the low 70s by the afternoon. Best of all, we had a tailwind nearly the entire way, so we pretty much cruised along and were not nearly as fatigued at the end as we were yesterday.

It is hard to describe the remoteness of our current route. Nor do the pictures adequately convey the scenes we saw today - miles and miles of treeless plain nearly empty of human habitation. We carried extra food and water today because there were no services of any kind along the route (with the exception of the Arlington outhouse, described below). Tomorrow's 57 mile ride will be similar, except that there is an auto parts store in Sheridan Lake (about 1/2 way) that also sells snacks. The flip side is the quiet such vacant spaces hold. We had no more than a couple dozen vehicles pass us the entire way, so we were able to ride in the nearly the center of the road most of the day without worry and just enjoy the songs of the thousands of Meadowlarks and other birds.

We took a break in what used to be the town of Arlington, now reduced to one house occupied by the caretaker of a restored wooden outhouse that sits in a little wayside across the street. Inside the outhouse, which is very cleverly designed, is a logbook for cyclists to record their names and destinations, etc. (I need to explain that we are currently following one of the established cross-country routes for cyclists. However, there was only one other logbook entry for this year and we've not yet seen any other riders. That may sound odd until one realizes that most people start these trips on one coast or the other, not in the middle of the country as we are.)

We stopped to eat our lunch in the city park in Haswell, which was fine. But there wasn't another soul in sight on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, only an amazing volume of tumbleweed.

Eads is - in a word - disappointing. We rolled in about 3:30 in the afternoon to discover that the only thing open (other than our motel, where we appear to be the only guests) is the gas station/convenience store where I am sitting and writing this after we finished our reheated frozen pizza. And they do not sell beer on Sundays or any other day. Eads is the county seat of Kiowa County, Colorado and has a U.S. highway running through it. There are a couple of cafes, a grocery store and a bar, but the whole place shuts down on Sunday.