June 7, 2021
Day 60 - Holyoke to Julesburg
Tailwinds!
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Today's ride was short, hot and fast. We had a strong tailwind most of the way and when we stopped for lunch just before we got to our motel, our average was 16.1 mph. That's the fastest for this tour and not bad on a loaded recumbent tandem. We have to give credit for this to Mother Nature. We had lots of stretches where we rolled along at 20 mph and a long downhill to the South Platte River coming into Julesburg where Kerry held us to less than 35 mph for safety. The high temperature was in the 90's again and there's no breeze with the direct tailwind, but it wasn't bad.
Our start this morning was delayed for about 30 minutes when we had a front flat less than two miles into the ride. It was a slow leak and Kerry spotted what looked like a business a short distance up the road. We pulled into the shade under this awning and felt lucky to find such a clean, safe and sheltered place to fix a flat.
A couple of minutes after we pulled in, this woman came over from the adjacent house. It turns out that we were not using a business, but her private property for our bike work. We immediately offered to leave, but she was very nice and said we could stay there to fix the flat and offered us any help we needed. Kerry told her we just appreciated the use of her place but didn't need anything else. Her name is Sherri. She and her fiance farm 3000 acres in the area.
After we talked for a few minutes, Sherri said she really had to get going as she had to take the truck to meet her fiancee who was out in the fields on the tractor. She walked back toward her house and pretty soon waved at us from her vehicle heading up the road.
We passed this large piece of equipment and even Kerry didn't have any idea what it was. We think it is used to load trucks because of the scales, but we have no real idea.
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It's hard to capture in a still picture, but we have been seeing true waves of grain.
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There was a crop growing that, agricultural experts that we are, we knew for sure wasn't corn, wheat or potatoes. We stopped to get closer photos so we could "harvest" the knowledge of our readers.
We were disappointed that we didn't see big fields of sunflowers in Kansas, but here is a Colorado sunflower which blooms all the time and apparently even shines at night.
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I told Kerry earlier today that I was going to stop taking pictures of grain elevators. You all must be getting bored with them, as am I. But coming into Julesburg, I saw these with "drive-thrus". Since that was new to this trip, I decided to go ahead and post them.
We'll be in Julesburg tomorrow to explore the town and visit a couple of museums. It's supposed to be another very hot day.
Today's ride: 33 miles (53 km)
Total: 2,397 miles (3,858 km)
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Buddy Hall
3 years ago
3 years ago
You're probably right. At the Fort Sedgwick Museum in Julesburg, they had some signage and ads about an old local sugar beet business. Thanks!
3 years ago
There are probably several processing plants, but Great Western Sugar processes them into granulated sugar everyone buys in the grocery store (if not cane sugar), or used to at least. I know they had a large plant in Scottsbluff, NE and probably other smaller cities in the area. They are white beets, and as makes sense, have a high sugar content.
3 years ago