day 44

we got up to the sun blarring on us so we got up a little early. we road around town to find a gas station, grocery store, or even a restaurant but there wasn't anything. the nearest town was eureka about 20 miles away so we filled up our water bottles at the baseball field where a lady was teaching kids how to bat, she was very intense. the terrain started to change a bit today with some hills that were spaced out a bit. we got to eureka where we grabbed some food and kept heading eastwards. as we passed through toronto there is a big lake/reservoir as well as a wildlife preserve and the hills started to roll. the reserve seemed to be a flooded treed area so it did not look like kansas but maybe somewhere in africa. it was pretty cool to see. it was a hot day with humidity so whenever you'd stop you'd just be drenched but then when you started biking again that headwind would make it a lot cooler. after a lot of riding and a false "welcome to chanute" sign, we finally made it to the actual town of chanute. for some reason they decided to have their welcome sign like 5 miles out of town. we hit up a gas station to find out where everything was and met with some local cyclers there who told us we should go eat at opies, a pizza buffet, which was downtown. we headed downtown and found opies and we just ate a ton and it was awesome: pizza, mashed potatoes, desert pizza, salad, rolls, they even had an ice cream dispensor! it was a great find and we just enjoyed the cushioned seats for our tired bodies. we found out that the city park was way on the south side of town so we made our way down there and saw that the bigger box stores were down in that area. the park was a big one and hard to figure otu where in the world we could camp but we eventually found 2 other cyclers and we threw down next to them. stephanie and sebastian were both super nice and helpful with giving us suggestions of places to stop and see on our way east. we stayed up late chatting about our travels and everyone we've met and everything we've seen. even though we've met other cyclers coming from the east, their stories are all different. its great! they shared some of their chicken pasta with us and it was great. we pitched our tents next to the golf course and hoped no one would give us any problems. we then just called it a day.