We have roadkill in the UK, but America does it bigger and better. I doubt there are more corpses per mile travelled. Anyway, the comparisons would be difficult without accurate data, because of the distances we're covering.

The US trumps us for size and stink.  You can often smell the roadkill before you see it. Sometimes you do not see it at all.  You do not need to to know it is there.  Sometimes they are so rank that you can taste them as you cycle past.

Size-wise, the deer win.  There have been a few.  Then the dogs. They may be coyotes. There have been lots.  Next up on the frequency scale are the racoons, especially in the last week or so. There are loads of them.

I've been pondering the frequency of dead racoons of late. It's not as though there is much else to think about on a hundred mile bike ride. Maybe the dead racoon count merely reflects their numbers in the countryside. I suppose they could just amble around feeling falsely secure in the dark. Or they could be like racoons in headlights. They ought to be agile enough to get out of the way of an oncoming car.

There are lots of possums too.  You can usually tell these, even when flattened and dessicated, as they are not the most handsome of creatures and have long hairless tails. The possum count is probably a consequence of their portly stature.

All this roadkill makes me wonder if there are many carrion eaters.  You'd think there would be as there is plenty for them to eat. Apart from the flies, of which there are clouds over a fresh carcass. The smell and the flies are compelling reasons for not taking photos of roadkill.

Lastly today, the weather.

Americans are more obsessed with the weather than Brits.  They have at least one dedicated weather channel on TV and all the local channels have a weather report every five minutes or more. This might be because the weather is so striking. The huge continent and topography give the weather more scope for extremities than we are used to. Deep snow, super-frosts, tornadoes and blistering sun.

We've only had the one day of proper rain in the month we've been riding, when we were in the hills and got uncontrollable shakes. There have also been days when we've seen showers in the distance, but largely been unaffected by them. There have been threats and warnings of thunderstorms since then, though none in the last week. We have had heavy storms in the night, which we've heard from bed.   There is a pattern, with the days starting fresh.  On a hot and humid day the energy in the sky can build up, with huge clouds rising in the afternoon causing a sort of monsoon. As I say, we've been spared the worst of this. Touch wood.

All this means that in western Kansas, Missouri and Illinois, the days can be very hot, with lots of sun. Yet the fields are green, even though they are too hilly for constructed irrigation (dykes, overhead irrigators and the like). Presumably the nighttime rain does the job.  There are many small ponds and lakes, mostly cut and dammed into hillsides and shallow valleys. They may be purely decorative, a good reserve for cattle and horses or for fishing.  I don't think they'd be big enough, or properly plumbed in to irrigate the land.  Pretty though.