Day 33 - June 5 - Washington, KS to Mankato, KS - Two Old Guys Take On A Continent

June 5, 2023

Day 33 - June 5 - Washington, KS to Mankato, KS

They Kept On Trucking!

Ed’s Story

If we hadn’t taken a slight detour to Cuba, KS, our route in a nutshell would’ve been as follows: leave campsite, turn left onto US 36, ride 63 miles, turn right into Crest-Vue Motel in Mankato, KS.

One other comment to note is there are very few services along this route. In some places there is a town but that’s about it.

We left camp at 7:15 this morning. We just rode. There wasn’t much to see for the first half of the ride

Shortly after we started riding, we were passed almost continually by large trucks, moving dirt, sand and other materials. At first we weren’t sure what the materials were for.

Eventually, we saw multiple sites where wind turbines were being erected. We also saw the trucks parking where concrete plants have been set up. The concrete would be used to help stabilize the wind turbines. Additionally, we saw storage locations with a large number of rolls of heavy duty cable for the turbines.

We saw three of these vanes about 5 miles before reaching Mankato. Each wind turbine uses three vanes.

This is another good view gives you an idea how long the vane actually is.

These trucks, including concrete trucks, must’ve passed us in both directions for at least 30 miles, until we reached Belleville, KS. Altogether the drivers gave us a wide berth, except for one who honked his horn continuously, and could have moved further away into the other lane.

After 20 miles of riding we turned south to go to Cuba, Kansas. Not only was there a little convenience store there, but it also got us off the heavily traveled highway for a while.

We went to the Cuba Cash Store, which was a little grocery store in town. We bought supplies for lunch to eat later on, and shared a big bottle of orange juice.

They must grow a lot of hay around here. We saw one location where the hay bales were stacked 20 wide, 20 high and 20 deep. This pile had a giant cover on them to keep them from getting wet. We also saw the “hay-scalater” they use to stack the bales.

There was at least one more shed in the area of these three where hay was stored.

We stopped for a break in Belleville, then continued riding to Scandia, Kansas, where we had lunch. From Scandia we still had about 22 miles to go to reach Mankato. We stopped at a picnic shelter in front of an American Legion building. There were also some historical monuments there.

There were a lot of Pawnee originally in this area. We saw a turn off while riding that pointed to a Pawnee museum 8 miles down a dirt road. We opted not to go.

This is a monument to the Scandinavians who settled in the area.

This is difficult to read, but basically what it says is it was erected by the Scandinavian Agricultural Society and to the pioneer men and women.

More Scandia local history from the 1800s.

We continued climbing today. We must’ve increased our overall elevation by 600 feet from Washington to Mankato. At one point we had a constant uphill over a 5 to 6 miles with had a 1 to 1-1/2 % grade.

We made a brief stop in Montrose, Kansas. Although there were no services in town, we pulled into a driveway, and the owners allowed us to fill our water bottles from their outdoor spigot, and to rest in their shade.

Their young son, Landon, five years old, came over and talked to me. Their trampoline was set up next to a large tree in the yard. At one point Landon said “Look at me.” He was up in the tree and then jumped from the tree to the trampoline.

Several other children came out and asked what we were doing. I told him we were going to the Pacific Ocean. He asked why on bicycles and I said because we’re crazy.

After six more miles we reached Mankato and the Crest-Vue motel.

Crest-Vue - needless to say it’s at the top of the hill.

Beds, a refrigerator, a microwave, and air-conditioning…. All the comforts of home.

We hurriedly dropped our bags off so we should go to the post office to get the package from our sister Dorothy. The woman in the post office recognized the bicycle clothes; said she had been talking to our sister; and said she had been waiting for us to get there. Great small town service.

After the post office, we went to the grocery store, and then the liquor store (for beer).

New Belgium (Belgian Collection) 1554…. Evocative of dark brews enjoyed in Belgian taverns 500 years ago.

We’ll tell you about tomorrow, tomorrow night, but needless to say unless we’re riding back to the grocery store or to find more adult beverages or going to the swimming pool, we won’t be doing much riding.

Until later, happy biking!

John’s Story

Bill, I just want you to know that at our campsite last night there were two large catalpa trees. I went over to study them so that I don’t mistake them again for buckeyes.

This is not the most picturesque sunrise picture I’ve ever taken, but that’s what we had this morning. I think the electrical substation adds a little bit of a Mad Max vibe to the shot.

The information we had about the campground in Washington before we arrived was that tent camping was free. A sign at the campground said that each “spot” cost $15 per night, and that tent camping was on down the hill a ways. It was apparent that each “spot“ was meant for an RV. We camped in the grass by a “spot” and drew water from the hydrant and electricity from the post, but we took the free tent camping at face value and did not pay. They’re probably looking for us.

In the middle of last night and again this morning my inflatable camping pillow needed to be pumped up, obviously leaking air. I made a warranty claim with Sea to Summit with my phone. By this evening I already have received the company’s commitment to send a new one under their lifetime warranty to my son Stanley’s house in Colorado Springs so that he can bring it to me in Fort Collins in a week or so. Success!

Today was the day of the long views. There were times when it seemed the horizon was at least 10 miles away in every direction. Realizing that we were going to be riding straight west down the road for over 60 miles without any turns I looked for ways to break things down into smaller pieces. When we came to the top of a hill I would spy something on the horizon in front of us and guess how far away it was. Then I would measure the distance it took to reach it. The longest stretch was about 4 miles.

For the first time in Kansas we started to see rocky road cuts. I’m grateful to those highway builders who chopped off the tops of some of the hills to make it easier for us.

The promised east wind never materialized today. In fact more often than not there was a slight headwind coming out of the northwest. But of course that didn’t happen until later in the day when we were getting tired and the air was getting hot.

Our one departure from Highway 36 was to the tiny town of Cuba. Before we took the turn to detour to Cuba, we called the store we were hoping to find there to make sure it was open, and it was. There wasn’t a large selection on the shelves, and we had to buy a 1/2 gallon jug of orange juice because the store didn’t sell individual serving size bottles. When we put as big a dent into the orange juice as we could I capped the jug and gave the remainder to the woman behind the counter. She promised it would not go to waste.

The woman running the store mentioned that she used to live in California. I asked her how she ended up in Cuba, Kansas. Her parents grew up here, but when her dad joined the military they ended up in California, where she grew up. She graduated high school in Paradise, the town completely destroyed by wildfires a year or two ago. When she and her husband started a family they decided they didn’t want to raise their kids in California and moved back to Cuba. That was 25 years ago, though it hurts to imagine that the town where she grew up isn’t there anymore. She said she wouldn’t trade living in Cuba for any place else.

The store had a little deli counter with numerous meats and cheeses. I asked her if she made and sold sandwiches. Why, of course. I really wanted a sandwich for lunch, but it was only 9:30 in the morning. I asked that she make a sandwich for me, put it in a Ziploc bag, then put that bag into a larger Ziploc bag with ice to keep it cool until lunchtime. That she did. She even put in a separate Ziploc bag with lettuce, tomato, onion and pickles to go on the sandwich. The sandwich was still nice and cool when we stopped in Scandia three hours later to eat lunch.

This was hanging on the wall at the Cuba Cash Store. Words to live by.

This is post rock as yard art. This is out front in the yard of the house next to the motel where we’re staying in Mankato. You see evidence of how the posts were made from the solid rock that came out of the ground. Notice the lines that are the remains of holes that were hand-drilled into the rock. Wedges were then driven into the holes to split the rock into posts.

More info about post rock can be found at Making Rock Posts

We checked into the Crest-Vue motel shortly after 3 PM and found out that the post office closes at 3:30 PM. We threw our bags into the room and rode farther into town to get to the post office before it closed. We picked up our general delivery package from our sister Dorothy in California and took the contents back to the motel. Here you see it laid out in all its glory.

Christmas in Mankato! We have two questions, Dorothy. Number one, what on earth are those weird Korean gloves for? Number two, did you think we were without toilet paper until this point? 😂

The story in town was that all the restaurants except for an ice cream place are closed on Mondays, so we bought dinner items at the grocery store and ate in our motel room. Because the ice cream place is just a few hundred yards down the road from the hotel, after dinner I walked down there to get a shake. Turns out they make all kinds of burgers and salads and wraps and pizzas, but pretty much all meat-based so it wouldn’t have been a good alternative for dinner for Ed tonight.

Sometime after we checked in this afternoon a large group of motorcyclists checked in. When I walked the few hundred yards to the ice cream spot I found the parking lot crowded with motorcycles. The bicyclist who rode 66 miles today walked to the ice cream place. The big strong motorcyclists rode their hogs that same few hundred yards. It somehow makes us feel superior.

Some of the other bikers in town, and further evidence of the Scandinavian background of many of those who settled this part of Kansas.

Tomorrow’s a rest day. I’m going to the fridge in our room and get another beer. Good night

Today's ride: 66 miles (106 km)
Total: 2,374 miles (3,821 km)

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Torsten LifI've been told that around 1900 there were more Swedes living in Chicago than in Stockholm! About 1/4 of Sweden's population emigrated following some years of bad crops. Many eventually moved on to Minnesota but obviously some made it to Kansas as well.
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