Thanks for the tips, Kelly. I'd sure like to see the town where you lived when the cycling bug bit you. Too bad I don't have enough time to ride there. Some of the other sites you mentioned sound interesting too. On my Las Vegas to Phoenix tour, I did visit the Japanese internment site in Poston, Arizona. It had information boards and a beautiful monument. I also remember it for being the only place I've ever felt really, really sad while on a bike tour.

My intel is 30+ years old. Take that into consideration.

Dodge City is Kansas' answer to Tombstone. It was a fun visit, and hopefully still is. Definitely it's a good location to kick off a Wild West tour. You could watch a few John Wayne movies to get in the mood. There is a 1939 movie titled Dodge City, not starring John Wayne.

Just over the Kansas line on Highway 50 is Lamar. We lived in Lamar for 10 years while running the movie theatre there. It's where we lived when I fell in love with bicycle touring. It's a subtle scenery kind of area. Lots of sagebrush, and open vistas. Gently rolling hills, and plenty of wind. Riding in the morning is a good choice.

I've ridden portions of Highway 50 towards Garden City, where we had good friends. Garden City is (was?), a huge, huge feedlot city. I'm calling it a city. It depends on your standards. Perhaps feedlots fit into your cow theme. Or, you might want to jog to the west one road and go through Ulysses and Lakin?

There used to be a number of old fashioned one screen movie theaters in Western Kansas. I wonder how many of them survived the conversion to digital.

You will be quite close to the WWII interment camp at Amache, CO - perhaps not a point to advertise, but it certainly is a piece of history. At the time I lived in Lamar, locals had disassembled the buildings for the materials, and it was basically bare dirt with a small sign. It is now a NPS historic site, with recreated buildings.

You will also be close to the Sand Creek Massacre site in Colorado - again not a proud moment in history.

Thank you. I do feel a little better about my Kansas destination now that I've lassoed a route.

Yes, Toto too. Totally!

Yes, and with all that empty space between the towns I should have plenty of time to think about how to describe them.

Kansas a mistake? No way!

I went on the Bazine Cooperative website to learn the details of their apostrophe-for-g exchange but saw nothing. Then I realized you must have written a bit of absurdist humor, which makes you MY people.

And rightly so!

To be sure, I'll be on the lookout for all those things. But none of them scare me as much as the flying monkeys.

With route in hand, it looks like you have this trip all lassoed up. Looking forward to following along :-)

Toto!

Liberal? Sublette? Larned? Kismet? Ransom? You're already off to a great start with the town names. Looking forward to reading about it.

Your first big mistake is Kansas.

But I googled it and discovered that there if you stop at the Bazine Co-op you can trade in apostrophes for "g's" but you want to do that soon before the spring rush.

Lotta straight lines in that map, and in Kansas.
Also: David Bromberg!!! You are my people.

How now green cow, er dinosaur.

Watch out for tornados, lions, scarecrow, tin men, and oh yeah-wicked witches.

Yup, Bluegills are my target! Best eating, (and usually easiest to catch) but a lot of work to clean.

By the way, if you Google search water moccasin (cottonmouth) range map, you will find that in Kansas the ones the locals call water moccasins are merely (very similar looking) northern water snakes. (I wanted to be a Herpetologist, but life got in the way)

I heartily agree with Keith. Tornados are all nasty! I have seen 2 and been within a couple miles of a few others, the most recent in 2019. In 1974, a big one blew through Richmond, KY and killed 4. Same day, Xenia, OH got nearly wiped off the map by another big one.