Day 36 - June 8 - Franklin, NE to Arapahoe NE - Two Old Guys Take On A Continent

June 8, 2023

Day 36 - June 8 - Franklin, NE to Arapahoe NE

Movin’ On Up

John’s story

A little more about last night. We had a great family dinner with our hosts. Their two younger sons are still at home, 14 and 16 years old, and they were at the table with us. We had great conversations and got to know each other a little bit. Michael works for the USDA, and his office is literally across the street from their house. Amy was a social worker up in Alaska and it was through her work that they came to adopt their two younger sons. They decided to move to Franklin, Nebraska, for the small town lifestyle and the lack of distractions and temptations you’d find in a larger city. The boys have only limited access to the Internet and social media, and I don’t remember seeing a television in the house. Quite an interesting family.

I was the last one to go to bed last night, so when I called Carol in Oklahoma City I went outside to sit in the rocking chair on the porch in the dark. As I sat down a really bright star in the sky caught my eye. I noticed that it was slowly moving, but too bright and moving too slowly to be a plane. It traveled a short distance across the sky and then began to dim out until finally it disappeared. I’m pretty sure I was watching the International Space Station going into the earth’s shadow. Pretty cool!

Remember that yellow water I drew from a hydrant yesterday and drank two bottles of? I let some of it settle overnight in a glass to see what would happen. Here’s the result. The upper part of the water is fairly clarified and there’s a lot a little clumps of clay near the bottom. So the color wasn’t rust or some other contamination, it was suspended clay particles as I thought. Since it’s been over 24 hours and I have not been reduced to writhing in agony on the floor from some sort of poisoning, I’m assuming I’m OK.

Water from a lake or river might look like this coming into a water treatment plant. At the plant a flocculant like alum would be added to the water to force all of the little clay particles to collect together and settle to the bottom quickly, leaving clarified water to move on to the next stage of treatment. I wish I’d had a little bit of alum last night to accelerate this process.

For most of the day yesterday the hills were long and low grade while we were traveling west. Once we turned north the hills became shorter and steeper. I think when we were traveling west we were traveling with the grain of the topography, and turning north we were suddenly cutting across the grain. That makes some sense because many of the rivers in this area run east-west, so the valleys and hills would be oriented east-west.

I thought this was a curious juxtaposition of images in the back of a grocery store.

At the same grocery store I had really delicious street tacos for lunch. We talked to the owner of the store outside, and he told us that he had hired two Hispanic women a few weeks before. One day one of them brought some tacos for him to eat. He loved them and made an offhand comment about how they should sell them in the store. The next morning he found the two women in the back of the store cooking up a storm and getting ready to sell street tacos. Well, go with the flow he thought, and now his store is in the street taco business.

We saw our first cactus today. If you look closely you can see a yucca plant hiding in the grass.

At one point I thought I was about to ride into some puffs of smoke. As I got closer I saw that each puff of smoke was a cloud of millions of gnats. I managed to miss most of them. I’ve never seen them in that kind of grouping before. It was like multiple flocks of birds.

We met another bike tourer today traveling in the opposite direction. Mark left Denver some days ago and is headed to Atchison, Kansas, and then Kansas City to visit a friend. He has been bicycle touring since 1976, so I’m sure we could’ve learned a few things from him if we had spent more time talking on the side of the road. Alas we had to go our separate ways as the heat of the day was building and we both wanted to get to our end points. It ended up in the low to mid 90s today. Looking forward to some cooler weather coming in the next couple of days.

When we arrived in Arapahoe first thing we did was stop at the distillery for some tasting. The distiller or still master or whatever you call him led us to the back and let us sample some barrel proof bourbon and some wheat whiskey. Both were pretty good and smoother than I would’ve expected for such high proof spirits. Then things got weird. He went back to supervise something going on with some distillation and sent his Russian wife out front to serve us. She acted very strangely. We each had one or two more tastes of the 20 or so bottles that were on the counter in the tasting room. When I asked to taste the slivovitz, she got a funny look on her face and said, “that’s a $150 bottle. Are you sure you want to taste it?“ She eventually did give me a taste but seemed very reluctant to let us taste anything else. We finally said thank you and goodbye and left. They never said anything about a fee for the tasting and never asked for any payment. After we left, Ed said that he saw a sign saying barrel tasting was $30. Perhaps she has sent the KGB out to look for us to exact payment. We’re laying low.

There are a few RVs here in the city park with us. I walked by one and said hello to a couple about my age who were seated in the shade of their unit and noticed that the tag was from Oklahoma. We fell into conversation and I found out they live in Bethany, OK, just a few miles from where I live. Brian and Beverly have toured on bicycles before and were very interested in what we were up to. Small world.

I’m going to hang up the journal for now because the bugs are starting to eat me. I’m going to hide in the tent, but first, tonight’s Pernell Roberts song.

.They Call the Wind Mariah

Ed’s Story

We were up again at 5:30 and Mike, our WarmShowers host was already up. After we ate breakfast, we loaded up the bikes and hit the road.

We have seen examples of veterans memorials in small towns throughout Kansas and Nebraska, and also in many other states. I think this reflects highly on the towns to honor those veterans, and those who sacrificed their lives in service to their country.

Local veterans park on the way out of Franklin.

One thing I noticed about Nebraska compared to Kansas, is that in Kansas, the road grades average 2% as you are riding up the long hills. In Nebraska they average 4 - 5% getting up at 6% at many times.

We mentioned to Mike, our host, that we did not see very much center pivot irrigation in Kansas. He noted that we will see a lot more in Nebraska. and he was correct.

For those of you that don’t know, center-pivot irrigation is a method of crop irrigation in which equipment rotates around a pivot and crops are watered with sprinklers. In many cases we saw that the crops are also planted in a circular method.

We talked about a lack of services throughout these western states. This is a good example of a bar that outlived its usefulness.

It’s sad, another closed bar and grill. But you will notice they have their own outhouse out front.

The Nebraska Road department is doing major road grading on US 136 that we rode on today. They are basically regrading the sides of the road possibly to keep the hills from eroding or just for cosmetic purposes. It was hard to tell. The road maintenance went on for about 6 miles.

A lot of side road grading going on here. Couldn’t figure out why they were doing it except maybe for cosmetic purposes.

It’s true…I saw no democratic flags here….but then again it’s not a very big town.

I’m crossing a bridge here but could not figure out where the big hill is shown on the GPS. Another glitch, I guess.

We stopped in Alma for a coffee and a dessert. We asked around and were told the Dragonfly Café was the best place to go.

The coffee was great, and it was very well decorated inside.

Coffee at the Dragonfly Cafe….the workers did not know where the name came from.

Some cool bikes hanging on the wall…they might actually be worth something.

A lone engine sitting on the side train track. Never saw a train on that line, only one that paralleled it.

We got to one location later in the day, where they were repaving the road, and there was a single lane of traffic for about 3 miles. John and I rode in the center of the lane to prevent a large truck from passing us, and trying to squeeze us off the road.

As we approached the final turn to Arapahoe we came across a road sign indicating we would be riding on US 6. If I had turned east on this road, vice west, I would only have to ride 1052 miles to get home as US 6 goes right through Fremont Ohio where I live.

US 6 heading East….I could go home on this road as it goes right through Fremont OH where I live,

We finally arrived in Arapahoe. John talked about the distillery. We set up camp, went swimming and then shopping. This drawing was on the wall outside the grocery store. It was a nice welcome to town.

A nice welcome sign on the side of the store.

A nice swimming pool. A lot warmer than the one in Mankato and cheaper also.

After the grocery store, we went looking for a beer. Neither the liquor store nor the convenience store had any beers of any quality. We finally went to the bowling alley when it opened at 5 o’clock to drink a couple beers.

We returned to the campsite; made dinner; showered; charged our electronics; talked to people; killed mosquitoes; hung up our food; and decided to go to bed.

Then guess what happened? We are camped within 50 feet of a train track. One train went by earlier, and another one just went by right now. Noisy and blowing the horn. It’s going to be a long night. We should have taken the owners of the distillery up and rented a room at the motel. We would not have had to worry about the train. I will let you know tomorrow how well I did or did not sleep.

Tomorrow is a 40 mile ride to McCook. This ride will be on US 6. We are on this road coming into Arapahoe. It is a very busy highway. The road did have a berm, but it was not in the best of condition. As long as the berm continues tomorrow, I will ride it… Better safe than sorry.

Until tomorrow, happy biking!

Today's ride: 64 miles (103 km)
Total: 2,237 miles (3,600 km)

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Comment on this entry	Comment	4

Jane ChimahuskyI hope you two didn’t create a huge slow line of traffic for those three miles…
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1 year ago

Ed ChimahuskyTo Jane ChimahuskyThere was only the one truck behind us, but we didn’t care….we have our rights!
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1 year ago

Jane ChimahuskyTo Ed ChimahuskyWell when you get squished because you slowed down the wrong driver for too long- we don’t want to hear your complaints!!
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1 year ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Ed ChimahuskyIt is fine to be right, but you do not want to be dead right.
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1 year ago