The road I intended to use was covered in water, so I attempted to slowly peddling through it but couldn’t see the other side (and the road marking dissapeared) and abandoned that idea. So I used the busy highways until they reconnected to the Lewis and Clark bike trail. It was a bit annoying since I had to backtrack and go the long way round, but it cannot be helped. Everywhere you looked were roads flooded over, but thankfully all of the main highways stayed above water.
Crossing the Missouri into Atchison, Kansas was a hair-raising experience and as I caught my breath back and the lactic acid drained from my legs I spotted an old steam train not too far away from the road in a depot, and took a closer look. It was the same one used at the time of the expansion of the railway system. I’m sure Grandad Firth would have loved to see it, as it a was huge piece of machinery – also, the information center lady informed me that on the weekends they had model steam engines running on the foot wide tracks, so I bet he would have loved to see that.
That evening I camped in White Cloud’s city park where the local children were playing. They were a noisy bunch and kept asking questions whilst I set up my tent.
One of them asked:
“Do all English people speak as quiet as you?”
So I told them:
“Yes, we do. You see America is so big and spread out that everyone has to shout, whereas in England we all stand much closer together, and so don’t need to!”
They thought I was serious.
N39.97634W095.29829
Washington DC to Seattle 2008 