Photo 1: Dodge City at dawn.
Photo 1: Dodge City at dawn.
Photo 2: On the road to Jetmore.
Photo 3: Jetmore's main street.
Photo 4: Mural on Jetmore's main street.
Photo 5: "Mileage" mark on newly finished SR 156 toward Larned.
Photo 6: Inside the Burdett Cafe in Burdett, KS. The only restaurant on the road between Jetmore and Larned.
Photo 7: Jan and Bill Mark from Winter Park, Florida.
Last Modified on 9/22/1999 at 18:08:50
Day's Narrative: The restaurant beside the motel had a breakfast buffet for $5.50. It was a good bargain for someone bicycling all morning. I left Dodge City in the Rural Rush Hour. It seems that from 7:00 am until about 9:00 am there are lots of vehicles on the road. These are telephone linemen, construction workers, and other portions of the rural population. It seems to happen in all the small towns we have been in. After 9:00 the traffic quiets down and the roads are relatively empty. The road to Jetmore, the first town on today's route, is pretty empty. There are no stores or gas stations. Photo 2 shows a segment of the highway. Jetmore itself, however, is quite similar to my home town, Munfordville, KY. The courthouse is in the same place in the town and the streets look a lot alike. Photo 3 is a picture of Jetmore's main street. Photo 4 is of the mural on a building. I stopped here for a soft drink and sweet roll. After leaving Jetmore the highway was under construction. That is, it was being finished up. I noticed that on the pavement were mileage numbers which had been sprayed on by the highway department. See Photo 5. Following these numbers was a lot easier than using my odometer on the bicycle (which is in kilometers--it would take too long to explain why, but it's what I'm used to) so I started counting off the miles using the pavement numbers. I soon made the discovery that the mileage numbers on the pavement were not in miles, but in kilometers! It would appear that American civil engineers are secretly converting to the metric system. Connie caught up with me just 5 miles before Burdett. We agreed to meet at the cafe in Burdett and have lunch. This cafe is the only restaurant along the road in the 46 mile stretch between Jetmore and Larned. Photo 6 shows the interior of the restaurant. As I neared Larned I met two bicyclers, Bill and Jan Mark, leaving Fort Larned. We stopped and talked for a while. They were with the annual Santa Fe Trail bicycle tour which leaves Santa Fe each Fall. We stopped in Larned at Subway so they could eat a late lunch. Bill and Jan are from Winter Park Florida and have bicycled almost everywhere in the US in the last few years, including across the country from San Diego to Georgia, the Natchez Trace, and from Virginia down the east coast to their home in Florida. I arrived at the motel about 2:30 pm in record time due to having a portion of a tailwind most of the trip. It was a beautiful day. © Ray & Connie Poore, 1998
Return