Tribune, KS to Sheridan Lake, CO

We got up and went in search of food, which lead us back to the truck stop.

We ran into a couple of Trans Am racers also having breakfast and made sure they knew to stop at Newton Bike Shop.  They had stayed at the motel, but not without fighting to get a room.  Again, due to harvest time, there were no rooms, but the owner was able to find a room for them last minute.

We knew it would not be a long ride today and we were looking forward to getting to Colorado.  We started on our way but the biting flies would not leave Linda alone.  It got so bad that when Linda stopped to put more bug spray on, they attacked her even more due to the lack of wind.  Linda started screaming in frustration because they were all over her.  It felt like a horror movie.  “Attack of the flies” or something.  Phil tried to help and started trying to swat them away with the large orange flag he had picked up.  It created quite a spectacle on a regularly traveled road and someone with a pick up truck pulled over to see if we were okay and if we needed a lift.  Linda graciously accepted an indoor respite from the evil blood sucking flies.

The gentleman told us the flies are especially bad after a rain and that they should get better once the wind picks up a bit.  There is no bug spray that works for them either.  He was a worker headed to a farm right at the Colorado/Kansas border, so he took us there, a total of 8 miles.

Once we got to the border, we unloaded the bikes and by that time the wind had in fact picked up a bit, making the flies a little more bearable.  We celebrated arriving to a new state.

It was only a few more miles to Sheridan Lake, where we had heard there was a nice church to stay at.  Eastern Colorado looked a whole lot like western Kansas: Flat for miles with nothing but wheat fields.  We arrived to Sheridan Lake and there had been enough rain this season  so there was actually water in the lake there.

We found the only convenience store in town (actually the only business in town).  Sheridan Lake was noted on our maps to be ~100 people, but locals said it was more like 68 people.  We got directions to the church as we had no phone signal or 3G network.  It was easy to find and the door was open.  We looked around to see if anyone was around and then a little girl appeared what seemed to be out of nowhere.  She introduced herself as Victoria and asked if we were cyclists.  We said yes and she started to show us around, since her Dad (the pastor) was out of town right now.

She let us know where we could sleep and that we had to leave our bikes outside.  Apparently, they used to let cyclists bring their bikes in and then someone decided to grease their bike chain in the nursery and left a huge stain.  We were stunned someone would be that irresponsible and ignorant.  We eventually met her older brother, who was careful to make sure we were being given enough space.

At this point we knew we would be stopping in Laramie and not continuing our journey to the west coast.  We had wifi at the church and we were able to contact Mom and Dad to let them know of our plans andso they could start sending packages before they left on vacation.  Linda needed to also contact the UW apartments to make sure everything was squared away and felt better calling instead of emailing to get answers right away.  The pastor’s wife was nice enough to let me use her phone to make those calls.  We enjoyed everyone’s company there, as Phil felt a little nervous being so far away from civilization in such a small town.  Being around people helped to calm his nerves.

We took one more trip down to the store to get some food and got some great homemade ice cream too.