day 41

we awoke once again being the only ones still at the park; jeff must've peaced out early morning on his last tube. i was up at 8 for some reason and went in search of breakfast foods; i hit up the only grocery store where i picked up milk, cereal, and a pear. i came back and ate half the bag of cap n crunch but saved the pear for later that day. evan arose and we started packing up. of course it was going to be another hot day out and had the potential of being a really long day depending on the wind. we were trying for larned but if the wind was bad then we'd stop in rush center. yes the wind was still blowing from the south creating a side wind. as we biked we went through empty towns that looked like they'd been destroyed by tornadoes or something. more fields and flat terrain but we got to watch the farmers start harvesting which was really cool; you'd see the big combines out there cutting the wheat then the little tractors picking up the wheat. a neat process. we reached ness city, which was a bigger city and we hit up a gas station for cold powerade. as we rode we decided that larned was out of the question since we had to head south for 20 miles and that would be a straight headwind and we were already tired and hot for one day of riding. we stopped in rush center which had a tiny park, one open restaurant, and 2 gas stations that seemed to be closed. we hungout in the shade reading and napping since it was only 64 miles then went and got dinner at the local sports bar and grill where the owner is the brother to TCU's head football coach. kind of random out in kansas but cool. we ordered huge chicken fried steaks and watched college baseball enjoying the cold water and the air conditioning. we chatted with a local and headed back to the park where we read some more in the shade. we saw a bird sitting on the swing set and bunnies seemed to roam the grass; nice to see some wildlife that was alive. lately we've seen a lot of road kill including: snakes, toads, owls, lots of little birds, a hawk, deer, cats, and raccoons. once the sun set the mosquitoes came out in force and started really attacking us since we have such sweet blood! we setup the tent and seeked refuge from them. we decided to go to bed early tonight and get up early to try and tackle that 20 miles south and hope for no headwind since everyone tells us that biking earlier is not as hot and there is no wind. they are only half right. we laid in the tent just sweating due to the start of humidity. we tossed and turned all night until about 3 am when we just started to fall asleep when a pack of roaming pugs came and started barking at us for what seemed like an eternity. darn pugs! they eventually let us be and we got a little bit of sleep before getting up at 7. the highlight that night though was seeing the fireflies; it was our first glimpse of them on this trip so that was super exciting!