Finding my Marbles (7/10/23 Mon)

Same morning routine. The tent's fly was wet inside and out, and took some time to dry. During coffee I pulled it off, shook it out and hung it over a section of the fence that surounds the dog park. That fence and park was in the sun, while my entire site was shaded by trees. It was dry, packed and on the rode by around 0800.

On Sunday I had really just dropped down the western Nebraska boarder. So today was a lot of Nebraska in ti's longer west to east direction. It retained much of the lumpy farmland description, but featured less trains. And the middle section is flatter, but gets lumpy again by the eastern edge. On the eastern edge I wanted to ensure I rode into Kansas, so I dropped south a litle prematurely.

After Carhenge I sought out something to visit today. The Garmin Zumo GPS offered up a few options and my favorite was the Marble Museum. It seemed very fitting while I'm on Roll-About to visit a marble museum. It's also something that I have space for in my cramped lugage.

The museum was also a junk store that sold coins and other random things. The owner was interesting and loved to show off his vast collection. I like the modern art marbles, the natural stone variations, the Uranium infused and the mistakes. I have pictures of all but the mistakes. Aparently uranium was common in marbles before it was mandated to remove it in 1930. It makes them glow brightly under blacklight. The mistakes are generally two mables joined by accident while still hot, but some are just melted. It was a good stop and now I own some uranium!

The other wonderful event of the day was a stop for ice-cream. It reached 89F during my ride and ice-cream sounded like the solution. So I looked up a good place during my refueling in Hiawatha, Kansas. The Hiawatha Creamery makes a cookie sunday. First they go away for 15 minutes and make a peanutbutter cookie from dough. Then while hot they put my servers favorite ice-cream on it. Which was sticks and stones, some form of chocholate chunks and pretzels in a chocolate ice-cream. It was a fantastic combination. If you feel this isn't the perfect combo, you can change out the cookie for chocolate chip or sugar cookie, and some other flavor of ice-cream. But I wouldn't recommend any variation from what I had!

My campgrouund stop was just east of Kansas City, MO. Keeping me out of the rain completely. Arrival at my destination was a little touch and go because the campground was closed and didn't appear to have any tent sites. But they had one wild site, which is exactly what I needed. I asked where to eat they suggested an authentic mexican restaurant just down the streat called El Toucan. It too was good.

Good day of riding in some heat. But I didn't deploy my wet neck bandana until mid afternoon, and only wet it that once. It didn't last long at 75-80mph. Neither does my premium fuel. I had the worst gas milage today at 38mpg with a full tank consumed at 80mph. I think my best was just under 55mpg when traveling over gravel at speeds closer to 50mph.