Day 9 - Atchison, KS

It's been a crazy few days. So much has happened since I updated yesterday, it seems like a few days have passed to me. After updating in Cameron yesterday, I went out to buy food and head to Wallace state park to camp for the night. On the way there, instead of going to the park, I just turned and started heading towards Kansas. It had cooled down to 100 degree heat index and I had a lot of rest and wanted to do more riding. It was about 6pm so the sun was starting to go down. I was going straight west on highway 36 to St. Joseph so the sun was right in my eyes but I had a wide shoulder. About 8 miles down the shoulder narrowed and since the sun was right in drivers' eyes and I didn't want to get run over by a semi, I pulled over a few miles later and asked a couple at a farm if I could sleep out there. They ended up being really cool and we just sat and chilled for a few hours and they made me food. There ended up being an amazing sunset, accompanied by some fast moving storm and low flying storm clouds that brought with them some much needed cold wind. I got some good pictures and had the best nights sleep yet camping out. I woke up once in the middle of the night because something was brushing up against my tent and I thought it was a possum or something so I went out to scare it off and it ended up being a kitten. I am a monster. Also, my tent was covered in about 50 snails when I woke up which was weird.

Anyways, I left this morning around 7:30am thinking I was going to stay in a hotel in St. Joseph for the day and rest up. I got to St. Joseph and didn't feel like resting, I wanted to keep going so I went on through to Kansas. It was fairly low temperature compared to the previous days and the land was starting to flatten out so I was making good time and feeling good. 35 miles later I hit highway 7 which is the glacier hills scenic route. I figured I'd check that out and ended up heading to Atchison. For Kansas there were some big hills. I rode about 20 miles down that highway and once I got closer to Atchison the hills just kept getting longer and steeper so I pulled in to the tourism center to see where the cheapest hotel was in town. As I was pulling in, a lady was asking about my trip and said I could just stay in her guest room. I though she seemed cool enough so I biked to her house, which ended up being this huge mansion overlooking the Missouri river. This was especially good timing because it stormed just a few hours later. The past few days were especially cool. Tomorrow I can leave with clean clothes and everything fully charged and start heading south through Kansas.