Eastern Colorado along this stretch of secondary highway is dry and lonely and grim. The towns are just this side of ghost towns except for those all the way over on the other side. Kansas starts out pretty much the same, but seems right from the start (Tribune is the first town you come to) just a bit more prosperous with landscape that is just a bit more relieved with color and contour. I was in Haswell (at the end of the last post) on Saturday night. Now, on Friday night, I'm about two thirds of the way across Kansas. It has been pleasant riding for the most part and the countryside is getting prettier. Still basically flat of course, but with much more variety of vegetation, crops, wildlife, even some creeks that are not entirely dried up. I've camped in a church, an informal "bicycle oasis" which was like a cyclist's B & B, city parks, even once (when the headwind got the best of me late in the day) basically by the side of the highway. Last night the guy at the bike shop where I bought a new tire in Great Bend told me the fire station a couple of blocks away would let me pitch my tent on their little lawn, and sure enough they did. Most of my campsites have been noisy and subject to car headlights and street lights, but I've tended to sleep pretty well and I'm feeling in top form. Toward the end of the day today I stopped in a funky little fruit shop in a tiny hamlet. I just wish I could have recorded the fragrance of that place. Wonderful. I drank a 16 oz. fresh cider slushy and the nice lady filled my water bottle with well water and ice. Only had about 5 more miles to go, but I was pretty parched. I'm spending tonight at the town or maybe federal park in Buhler, near Nickerson. It has a beautiful pool (free for distance cyclists!) which I enjoyed soon after arrival, a pond, a place to charge my gadgets (using some ingenuity) and a general happy all-American feel. I'll sleep especially well tonight because this place really feels safe. The only little problem is you can't get beer here, which apparently is due to a Mennonite influence in the town. It is my favorite way to rehydrate, I must admit, but there apparently are alternatives. People I meet and talk to along the way continue to be amazingly supportive of cyclists like me and seem, along this TransAmerica Trail, to be proud of their role in helping us along our way.