Rolling out the red carpet

Day 5 - Wednesday

After a grueling day before, we made sure we would get a good night's rest, so we opted to sleep indoors in McPherson's wonderful facility. We left our tents set up and just hauled in the air mattress, pillows and blanket and crashed with a couple hundred others. Everyone was so exhausted that the room was silent at 10pm and didn't come alive until 5:30am. And amazingly, our bodies recouped and we were ready to take on a day of riding through the Flinthills. The winds weren't as bad but the temps were still very high. We stopped for lunch (at 9:30am!) in A park in one of the small towns along the route to Cottonwood Falls. It was breath taking when we rode up a long hill to suddenly be hit with the panoramic view of the Flinthills we had time to soak it in as we coasted down the other side. Awesome!! We arrived at our destination a little after noon and felt do welcomed by this community.

If you haven't ever visited this little gem in the Flinthills, you are missing out. They closed off the streets of downtown and had live Bluegrass music in front of the Emma Chase Cafe (where we had rhubarb pie), and had a beer garden next to the historic hotel (where they served brats), and they had the beautiful Chase County courthouse open for tours (the oldest existing courthouse in Kansas). The town did it right and the bikers really enjoyed of their hospitality. We camped at Swope Park near the pool. It was a nice quiet ace with trees. I rank this destination as the best so far. Tomorrow's road leads us to Burlington...